McCarthy's only redeeming quality is he went after communists, and that is a stretch since in America we admire freedom of thought, speech and the innocence of individuals until proven guilty. The blacklists of the McCarthy Era are very similar to the blacklists that are happening now as we speak were people who are for the Dobbs decision lose jobs, or the overt and obvious discrimination against evangelical Christians.
Tom Watson Jr, the longtime CEO of IBM, wrote about his encounter with McCarthyism. The issue involved the window blinds he had in his office:
These were vertical blinds, which were not common at the time. An engineer who was in Watson’s office for a meeting made a sketch of the blinds, and inadvertently left it in his shirt pocket when he took the shirt to the dry cleaner. The laundry man thought the paper looked suspicious, and sent it to Senator McCarthy. Pretty soon, a group of investigators came and said to the engineer, “We’ve identified this as a plan for a radar antenna, and want to hear about it. We want to be perfectly fair. But we know it is a radar antenna and the shirt it was found in belongs to you.”
The engineer explained about the vertical blinds, and the investigation team then asked to see Watson. The chief executive officer of IBM showed them the blinds and demonstrated the way they worked.
"They looked them over very carefully and then left. I thought I had contained it, but I wasn’t sure, and I was scared. We were working on SAGE (the computerized air defense system) and it would have been a hell of a way to lose our security clearance."
Shortly after the incident with the vertical blinds, Watson was invited to a lunch at Lehman Brothers, along with about 20 other high-ranking businesspeople. During the lunch, he mentioned his concerns about McCarthyism:
"Of the twenty-odd people present, I was the only one who took that position. That didn’t bother me. What bothered me was that the following week I got letters from several people who had been there, and they all had a similar message: “I didn’t want to commit myself in public, but I certainly agreed with everything you said.”"
I'm afraid that in our present era, the difference would be that most of the people would also have been afraid to send written messages of agreement.
True that there were real Communists at high levels in the government. But even if there had been real witches in Salem, doing diabolical things, that still wouldn't have justified the hanging of accused witches without sound evidence and due process.
Correct me if I missed something- the drawing was investigated and found to be benign and that was the end of it? At a company which was doing critical (and I assume very secretive) work for America's defense. And the feelings of the company's CEO are an important focus?
The idea that a dry cleaner could find an object that he doesn't recognize and assume that it is probably some kind of secret device seems to testify to a climate of paranoia.
More important, though, were the comments from the attendees at the Lehmann Brothers meeting: "“I didn’t want to commit myself in public, but I certainly agreed with everything you said.”"
I suggest anyone with a serious interest in McCarthy read "Blacklisted by History" by M. Stanton Evans. It is long, dry, and very repetitive, meticulously detailing the activities of so many of McCarthy's targets. With decades of subsequent research, especially from the Venona Papers, the book makes what I believe to be an irrefutable case that McCarthy was absolutely correct in his concerns and pursuits. And that today's shorthand use of "McCarthyism" is fatally flawed.
In the pursuit of evil, it only requires a single catalyst in the right explosive environment to unleash a massive wave of evil.
Germany was ready for Hitler because of the crushing economy that resulted from World War I. If you were a German man without a job, you did not really care about Hitler's plans if you got a job building armaments.
That is not an excuse by any means, but it is critical to understand how so many things are connected and nothing can be viewed in a vacuum.
Russia has an economy that is 25% smaller than Italy. The way to "fix" the Russians is to crush their economy. Reagan broke the USSR in the same manner. The Cold War win was one of the best things that happened to the world. Bravo, Ronald Reagan!
The Russians are at the bottom of the barrel as it relates to manpower, gear, and tech. Now, it is time to crush them.
The sanctions on Russia are working--they had a bloody potato shortage last month--but the west took way too long to get serious on energy. Just since the 5th of Dec the EU is finally in the game.
BTW, Russia has been buying scads of small to mid-size tankers with a useful life of 5-7 years to be able to send their oil to China and India because they have no pipelines like they had such as NordStream I/II. Did Trump nail it or not?
China is China, but India is a huge disappointment. They justify their actions on price. This is why US energy production is so critical. It would drive energy prices down to $20/bbl, neuter Russia, and take the prop out beneath India. Energy.
The military is not a policy making body. When the diplomats fail, the last act of diplomacy is force - war. When you give a man a gun and put aggressive leaders above him, there is no way that an army can conduct aggressive operations and not commit atrocities - My Lai comes to mind.
The best approach is to get the damn thing over with. This is why we should support the Ukrainians to the hilt.
Russia has some zany idea that their conscripts are going to fight effectively. They have no NCO corps, green and untested junior officers, and no tactical or strategic planning at the Division, Corps, or Army level. They cannot fix these things on the fly.
1. It - aiding the Ukrainians in destroying the Russian army - is the most cost effective way for the US and Nato to confront and neuter Russia.
2. The funding is a small fraction of the US military budget. Good God, $400B for student loan forgiveness? Give it to Ukraine in the form of our best weapons. The very best.
3. Russia will not cure itself. It must be defanged and used as an example as to what happens when barbaric, medieval, Dark Ages behavior is unleashed on peaceful nations. It is bloody 2023, not 1023.
What is interesting about Germany based on the article @David Foster linked to was that in post WW1 Germany due to rampant inflation, people who were junior were becoming bank presidents. When a leader took over that had some fiscal discipline, things returned to more "normalcy". He passed away, and Hitler took advantage. He was democratically elected, and lied about following the Constitution. We can only assume that some voters were intimidated, and that some polls were crooked reminding us of similar things happening in the US over the last 15 years.
Hitler had a policy of restoring the national pride of a defeated nation that was also in the shitter economically.
When he ascended to power, he immediately stopped making WWI reparations payments (they had previously been reduced by the Dawes Plan and another such effort later) and expanded the military -- particularly manufacturing.
It was cynically a job program initially.
It is not quite the whole truth that Hitler was "elected." Remember he was the head of a political party that had gone from 2.6% of the vote to 36.8% of the 1932 vote when Hitler ran against Hindenburg for President.
President Hindenburg -- who had won the election -- offered (in a misguided moment of coalition building) Hitler the Chancellorship of Germany in 1933 which then became his launching pad to become a dictator thereafter.
So, it is true Hitler achieved widespread electoral success, but it is not true that he was elected Chancellor. He was appointed Chancellor by President Hindenburg.
What is also true is that Hitler - involved in politics since after WWI - used propaganda as a daily tool of politics. The more outlandish the lie, the better.
[In many ways this reminds a keen observer of Biden and his constant lies as to things like his son, Hunter. Of course, the fucking Hunter Biden laptop was NOT bloody Russian disinformation. Like Hitler, Biden controls the reportage - witness the Twitter revelations. The FBI worked Twitter execs like an operative and they went along with everything thereby rigging the election.]
In focusing that propaganda, Hitler needed an enemy, a common enemy, for the people to focus their strength against and to justify his role. He had written Mein Kampf when imprisoned after a coup attempt. In that poorly written diatribe, he identified the socialistts, the Communists, and the Jews.
Europe, of course, had been conducting pogroms against the Jews for centuries, so they were low hanging fruit.
What is tragic is that MK held every single one of Hitler's insane assertions and ideas. It was out there for a long time and nobody studied it.
In the mid to late 1930s when it was clear Hitler was violating the armament restrictions, the French (who had 4-5X as many divisions as the Germans) and the English should have put Hitler down.
There is no doubt that the Nazis manipulated the polls. They had a paramilitary brown shirt contingent - reminds one of BLM or Antifa - since the 1920s.
We are playing with some of the same cards and themes today - broad censorship, the Deep State rising against lawful authority, the authoritarian conduct of the FBI (they worked the Hunter Biden angle like they were family), and the propaganda from the White House.
An extremely valuable document about what happened in Germany is the memoir written by Sebastian Haffner, who grew up in that country between the wars. I reviewed it here:
I was also going to mention his book, Defying Hitler. Excellent account. The other I would recommend is Ordinary Men for an understanding of how those who actually physically committed the atrocities that eventually became the extermination camps got to that point to begin with.
Great tip. It is hard for a lot of people to see what's happening in real time. It's easier to see in the rear view mirror when winners and losers are clear. Plus, the Nazi's were so evil it's even easier to see the protaganist vs antagonist.
Great Link!!! THIS: With fearful menace the state demands that the individual give up his friends, abandon his lovers, renounce his beliefs and assume new, prescribed ones. He must use a new form of greeting, eat and drink in ways he does not fancy, employ his leisure in occupations he abhors, make himself available for activities he despises, and deny his past and his individuality. For all this, he must constantly express extreme enthusiasm and gratitude. I think I will form a blog post around this. There are many similarities I see with events today.
The metastatic form of mimicry is populism. You rightly point out the left's. But the right has it in spades too. How else could Evangelicals give up Jesus to support a lying, philandering, Clinton donating, loser candidate who has/had no concept of any religious convictions whatsoever?
A super good free market commentary and policy recommendations on/for American workers. Read the introduction, conclusion, and the areas you are interested in including K-12 school choice. Addresses so many of the woe-is-me issues of the left (inequality) and the right (where did all the jobs go). We're on our 9th or 10th day of no sun in Chicago, so plenty of time here to read.
I hope you can read the Dispatch article. Lincicome is more of an adjunct at the Dispatch, he's a Cato person who specializes in trade. The article talks a fair amount about how imperfections within even the WTO system. As to the Evangelicals, nobody has written more about how they've been conned by turning to politics over Jesus more than David French of the Dispatch. And just to make a point the Dispatch now has about the best conservative writer in Kevin D Williamson, landing another blow to illiterate morons yesterday https://thedispatch.com/article/living-under-marshall-law/
My point is, I am a free trader. Trump was not and that was a disagreement I had with him for sure. But, it's not as if either party, or other countries are populated with free traders. They love subsidies. Get the Republicans to can the Ex-Im Bank and what sort of a vote will you get? End subsidies to American farmers? No chance. But, virtually every country has a system of tariffs, duties and subsidies that screw it up. In the case of China, they steal everything. Friedman postulated free trade would make them become a free society and he was wrong. So, pulling out of China given their goals makes a lot of sense to me. Isolate them and watch them crumble.
Lincicome is a pretty accessible writer and pretty clear about the warts of the current trade regime. Up until Trump the system was fairly, but imperfectly free trade oriented. Ex-Im was close to eliminated near the end of Obama. And then brought back to life under Trump. Trump moved the window and Biden is OK going with the flow.
Back on the mimicry - there's no logic for anyone to buy NFTs, even from "better than Lincoln, better than Washington" guy. The only thing that makes sense is mimicry. The video makes clear he's not any better than a 'C' list, time passed by celebrity. https://collecttrumpcards.com
David they certainly tried in certain ares try to get people to submit to their way of thinking. Perhaps others might cite other issues. However if you are in such a bubble that you can't see it you won't ever be able to stop when things go too far.
What I am saying is one party rule no matter who it is always goes too far. Until you recognize that it's hard to show some constraint where you need to show constraint. This is not to say we should be teaching little kids about sex. We shouldn't.
Prayer in schools, big issues. The movement for social conservatism with rock and roll album covers to name a couple. Today, it has swung entirely the other direction. If you are an evangelical Christian, you will be discriminated against in mainstream circles.
Never called it equivalent. Similar theme. One drum beats a lot louder than the other. The left in the US do want to destroy the Constitution. The right in the early nineties didn't but wanted to use social pressure. The left uses the courts and violence
The problem here perhaps is the definition of the right in America. In America, the left is relatively easier to categorize (as an agglomeration of socialists, progressives, and other varieties of social & economic collectivists) but the right is generally wrongly described. Frequently, people lump socially conservative evangelicals with Goldwater conservatives, capitalists, fascists, and Trump populists. This makes no sense. For example, traditional (big C Goldwater style) Conservatives are much closer to libertarians than evangelical (small c) conservatives, and are antagonistic to fascism. It is not obvious to me that these groups of people are any more than tangentially related only because of their antagonistic relationship with specific left-wing policies. If my premise is correct, then saying that the right and left are somehow similar in their totalitarian tendencies is incorrect and is just a soft-headed attempt at fairness. If the right is to definitionally to be the opposite of the left than the right should be comprised of social systems and ideologies of individual freedom (e.g., capitalism, classical liberalism, constitutional republicanism). In short, seen in this light, the right is the side that promotes the correct morality that gives rise to the principle of individual rights, which gives rise to the need of a political system that protects individual rights.
So are Trump supporters, or Republicans, or Evangelicals right wing? Sometimes yes and frequently no. If the far left is communist totalitarianism then how is centrally managed fascism it's opposite (which, in real life practice, is identical to communism)? It isn't.
Capitalism is the opposite of communism. There are many varieties of capitalists. From the live-and-let-live libertarian to the Coolidge style pragmatists. The big "c" Conservatives are fundamentally capitalists who believe that only a moral and just society can be capitalist and therefor they attempt to promote socially (small "c") conservative principles. Sometimes this promotion of socially conservative principles crosses over to force, which is obviously wrong (a failing of man) and anti-freedom. However, this is the normal push-pull of a free society created by man. Men are imperfect. Which is why we rely on the constitutional mechanisms of checks and balances and separation of powers, which are foundational to the Constitution.
But the left has almost no tie to individual rights. To the left, socio-economic rights are group rights, not individual rights. They are rights for organized interests: labor unions, farmers, school teachers, old people, blacks, and so forth. These rights encourage citizens to think of themselves as members of groups and to identify their rights with group-self-interests. The more powerful (politically connected) your group the more effective your group would be at obtaining these “rights.” These group rights are conspicuously not attached to obligations. The rights of our Founding Documents – The Declaration and the Constitution – were bound with duties. The right to liberty implies a duty to not take someone else’s liberty. Liberty was the product of virtuous, lawful, and conscientious people. These new rights of the progressives point to a kind of moral anarchy in which rights without obligations become the currency of the State. Rights are now putative claims on resources effectively limited only by other stronger such claims. The result has at best been an uneasy equilibrium of countervailing power.
Predictably, Sam Bankman Fried wanted relief from his bail, and because he is a "vegan" with ADD shouldn't be in jail. Ha!
Senator McCarthy's tactics may have been crude, but the fact that there were communists all through the federal government is now beyond doubt.
McCarthy's only redeeming quality is he went after communists, and that is a stretch since in America we admire freedom of thought, speech and the innocence of individuals until proven guilty. The blacklists of the McCarthy Era are very similar to the blacklists that are happening now as we speak were people who are for the Dobbs decision lose jobs, or the overt and obvious discrimination against evangelical Christians.
Tom Watson Jr, the longtime CEO of IBM, wrote about his encounter with McCarthyism. The issue involved the window blinds he had in his office:
These were vertical blinds, which were not common at the time. An engineer who was in Watson’s office for a meeting made a sketch of the blinds, and inadvertently left it in his shirt pocket when he took the shirt to the dry cleaner. The laundry man thought the paper looked suspicious, and sent it to Senator McCarthy. Pretty soon, a group of investigators came and said to the engineer, “We’ve identified this as a plan for a radar antenna, and want to hear about it. We want to be perfectly fair. But we know it is a radar antenna and the shirt it was found in belongs to you.”
The engineer explained about the vertical blinds, and the investigation team then asked to see Watson. The chief executive officer of IBM showed them the blinds and demonstrated the way they worked.
"They looked them over very carefully and then left. I thought I had contained it, but I wasn’t sure, and I was scared. We were working on SAGE (the computerized air defense system) and it would have been a hell of a way to lose our security clearance."
Shortly after the incident with the vertical blinds, Watson was invited to a lunch at Lehman Brothers, along with about 20 other high-ranking businesspeople. During the lunch, he mentioned his concerns about McCarthyism:
"Of the twenty-odd people present, I was the only one who took that position. That didn’t bother me. What bothered me was that the following week I got letters from several people who had been there, and they all had a similar message: “I didn’t want to commit myself in public, but I certainly agreed with everything you said.”"
I'm afraid that in our present era, the difference would be that most of the people would also have been afraid to send written messages of agreement.
True that there were real Communists at high levels in the government. But even if there had been real witches in Salem, doing diabolical things, that still wouldn't have justified the hanging of accused witches without sound evidence and due process.
Correct me if I missed something- the drawing was investigated and found to be benign and that was the end of it? At a company which was doing critical (and I assume very secretive) work for America's defense. And the feelings of the company's CEO are an important focus?
The idea that a dry cleaner could find an object that he doesn't recognize and assume that it is probably some kind of secret device seems to testify to a climate of paranoia.
More important, though, were the comments from the attendees at the Lehmann Brothers meeting: "“I didn’t want to commit myself in public, but I certainly agreed with everything you said.”"
Agreed, it sounds absolutely paranoid, in 2022. We can only guess how it sounded at the time.
I suggest anyone with a serious interest in McCarthy read "Blacklisted by History" by M. Stanton Evans. It is long, dry, and very repetitive, meticulously detailing the activities of so many of McCarthy's targets. With decades of subsequent research, especially from the Venona Papers, the book makes what I believe to be an irrefutable case that McCarthy was absolutely correct in his concerns and pursuits. And that today's shorthand use of "McCarthyism" is fatally flawed.
In the pursuit of evil, it only requires a single catalyst in the right explosive environment to unleash a massive wave of evil.
Germany was ready for Hitler because of the crushing economy that resulted from World War I. If you were a German man without a job, you did not really care about Hitler's plans if you got a job building armaments.
That is not an excuse by any means, but it is critical to understand how so many things are connected and nothing can be viewed in a vacuum.
Russia has an economy that is 25% smaller than Italy. The way to "fix" the Russians is to crush their economy. Reagan broke the USSR in the same manner. The Cold War win was one of the best things that happened to the world. Bravo, Ronald Reagan!
The Russians are at the bottom of the barrel as it relates to manpower, gear, and tech. Now, it is time to crush them.
The sanctions on Russia are working--they had a bloody potato shortage last month--but the west took way too long to get serious on energy. Just since the 5th of Dec the EU is finally in the game.
BTW, Russia has been buying scads of small to mid-size tankers with a useful life of 5-7 years to be able to send their oil to China and India because they have no pipelines like they had such as NordStream I/II. Did Trump nail it or not?
China is China, but India is a huge disappointment. They justify their actions on price. This is why US energy production is so critical. It would drive energy prices down to $20/bbl, neuter Russia, and take the prop out beneath India. Energy.
The military is not a policy making body. When the diplomats fail, the last act of diplomacy is force - war. When you give a man a gun and put aggressive leaders above him, there is no way that an army can conduct aggressive operations and not commit atrocities - My Lai comes to mind.
The best approach is to get the damn thing over with. This is why we should support the Ukrainians to the hilt.
Russia has some zany idea that their conscripts are going to fight effectively. They have no NCO corps, green and untested junior officers, and no tactical or strategic planning at the Division, Corps, or Army level. They cannot fix these things on the fly.
1. It - aiding the Ukrainians in destroying the Russian army - is the most cost effective way for the US and Nato to confront and neuter Russia.
2. The funding is a small fraction of the US military budget. Good God, $400B for student loan forgiveness? Give it to Ukraine in the form of our best weapons. The very best.
3. Russia will not cure itself. It must be defanged and used as an example as to what happens when barbaric, medieval, Dark Ages behavior is unleashed on peaceful nations. It is bloody 2023, not 1023.
Be well. Merry Christmas.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
What is interesting about Germany based on the article @David Foster linked to was that in post WW1 Germany due to rampant inflation, people who were junior were becoming bank presidents. When a leader took over that had some fiscal discipline, things returned to more "normalcy". He passed away, and Hitler took advantage. He was democratically elected, and lied about following the Constitution. We can only assume that some voters were intimidated, and that some polls were crooked reminding us of similar things happening in the US over the last 15 years.
Hitler had a policy of restoring the national pride of a defeated nation that was also in the shitter economically.
When he ascended to power, he immediately stopped making WWI reparations payments (they had previously been reduced by the Dawes Plan and another such effort later) and expanded the military -- particularly manufacturing.
It was cynically a job program initially.
It is not quite the whole truth that Hitler was "elected." Remember he was the head of a political party that had gone from 2.6% of the vote to 36.8% of the 1932 vote when Hitler ran against Hindenburg for President.
President Hindenburg -- who had won the election -- offered (in a misguided moment of coalition building) Hitler the Chancellorship of Germany in 1933 which then became his launching pad to become a dictator thereafter.
So, it is true Hitler achieved widespread electoral success, but it is not true that he was elected Chancellor. He was appointed Chancellor by President Hindenburg.
What is also true is that Hitler - involved in politics since after WWI - used propaganda as a daily tool of politics. The more outlandish the lie, the better.
[In many ways this reminds a keen observer of Biden and his constant lies as to things like his son, Hunter. Of course, the fucking Hunter Biden laptop was NOT bloody Russian disinformation. Like Hitler, Biden controls the reportage - witness the Twitter revelations. The FBI worked Twitter execs like an operative and they went along with everything thereby rigging the election.]
In focusing that propaganda, Hitler needed an enemy, a common enemy, for the people to focus their strength against and to justify his role. He had written Mein Kampf when imprisoned after a coup attempt. In that poorly written diatribe, he identified the socialistts, the Communists, and the Jews.
Europe, of course, had been conducting pogroms against the Jews for centuries, so they were low hanging fruit.
What is tragic is that MK held every single one of Hitler's insane assertions and ideas. It was out there for a long time and nobody studied it.
In the mid to late 1930s when it was clear Hitler was violating the armament restrictions, the French (who had 4-5X as many divisions as the Germans) and the English should have put Hitler down.
There is no doubt that the Nazis manipulated the polls. They had a paramilitary brown shirt contingent - reminds one of BLM or Antifa - since the 1920s.
We are playing with some of the same cards and themes today - broad censorship, the Deep State rising against lawful authority, the authoritarian conduct of the FBI (they worked the Hunter Biden angle like they were family), and the propaganda from the White House.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
An extremely valuable document about what happened in Germany is the memoir written by Sebastian Haffner, who grew up in that country between the wars. I reviewed it here:
https://ricochet.com/875108/how-a-country-abandoned-law-and-liberty-and-became-a-threat-to-humanity/
I was also going to mention his book, Defying Hitler. Excellent account. The other I would recommend is Ordinary Men for an understanding of how those who actually physically committed the atrocities that eventually became the extermination camps got to that point to begin with.
Great tip. It is hard for a lot of people to see what's happening in real time. It's easier to see in the rear view mirror when winners and losers are clear. Plus, the Nazi's were so evil it's even easier to see the protaganist vs antagonist.
Great Link!!! THIS: With fearful menace the state demands that the individual give up his friends, abandon his lovers, renounce his beliefs and assume new, prescribed ones. He must use a new form of greeting, eat and drink in ways he does not fancy, employ his leisure in occupations he abhors, make himself available for activities he despises, and deny his past and his individuality. For all this, he must constantly express extreme enthusiasm and gratitude. I think I will form a blog post around this. There are many similarities I see with events today.
Lady Justice puking while drag queens dance for kids......The sickos will not prevail! Thanks for leading by example. #KeepItUp !
A good article from "The Free Press" - "Why Everyone Wants the Same Things" that goes along with your UofC class: https://www.thefp.com/p/why-everyone-wants-the-same-things
The metastatic form of mimicry is populism. You rightly point out the left's. But the right has it in spades too. How else could Evangelicals give up Jesus to support a lying, philandering, Clinton donating, loser candidate who has/had no concept of any religious convictions whatsoever?
Here's one of the most depressing outcomes of populism - the diminution of free trade. Truly a sad outcome that is applauded by left and right populists. "Donald Trump Staggered the Global Trading System. Joe Biden Might Finish It Off." - https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/capitolism/donald-trump-staggered-the-global-trading-system-joe-biden-might-finish-it-off/
I don't think that example is a good one. The evangelicals wanted to support someone. Trump was more friendly to them than any President since Reagan.
The Dispatch guys aren't that smart. Do we have "free trade" with France? Did we prior to Trump?
A super good free market commentary and policy recommendations on/for American workers. Read the introduction, conclusion, and the areas you are interested in including K-12 school choice. Addresses so many of the woe-is-me issues of the left (inequality) and the right (where did all the jobs go). We're on our 9th or 10th day of no sun in Chicago, so plenty of time here to read.
https://www.cato.org/empowering-new-american-worker
I hope you can read the Dispatch article. Lincicome is more of an adjunct at the Dispatch, he's a Cato person who specializes in trade. The article talks a fair amount about how imperfections within even the WTO system. As to the Evangelicals, nobody has written more about how they've been conned by turning to politics over Jesus more than David French of the Dispatch. And just to make a point the Dispatch now has about the best conservative writer in Kevin D Williamson, landing another blow to illiterate morons yesterday https://thedispatch.com/article/living-under-marshall-law/
My point is, I am a free trader. Trump was not and that was a disagreement I had with him for sure. But, it's not as if either party, or other countries are populated with free traders. They love subsidies. Get the Republicans to can the Ex-Im Bank and what sort of a vote will you get? End subsidies to American farmers? No chance. But, virtually every country has a system of tariffs, duties and subsidies that screw it up. In the case of China, they steal everything. Friedman postulated free trade would make them become a free society and he was wrong. So, pulling out of China given their goals makes a lot of sense to me. Isolate them and watch them crumble.
Lincicome is a pretty accessible writer and pretty clear about the warts of the current trade regime. Up until Trump the system was fairly, but imperfectly free trade oriented. Ex-Im was close to eliminated near the end of Obama. And then brought back to life under Trump. Trump moved the window and Biden is OK going with the flow.
Back on the mimicry - there's no logic for anyone to buy NFTs, even from "better than Lincoln, better than Washington" guy. The only thing that makes sense is mimicry. The video makes clear he's not any better than a 'C' list, time passed by celebrity. https://collecttrumpcards.com
A good summary of the depredations of the left but, typically, blind to the insanity of the Trump right.
What the right wing (in the US, I presume) did in the early 1990’s. What an absurdity.
David they certainly tried in certain ares try to get people to submit to their way of thinking. Perhaps others might cite other issues. However if you are in such a bubble that you can't see it you won't ever be able to stop when things go too far.
I have no idea what you are talking about
What I am saying is one party rule no matter who it is always goes too far. Until you recognize that it's hard to show some constraint where you need to show constraint. This is not to say we should be teaching little kids about sex. We shouldn't.
"It’s not dissimilar from some of the things the right wing did in the early 1990s ..."
Such as?
Prayer in schools, big issues. The movement for social conservatism with rock and roll album covers to name a couple. Today, it has swung entirely the other direction. If you are an evangelical Christian, you will be discriminated against in mainstream circles.
Oh stop. Al and Tipper Gore angry at rock music is an extreme right phenomenon? Really? Cmon on man. The Left is shredding the constitution.
False equivalence is so lame.
Never called it equivalent. Similar theme. One drum beats a lot louder than the other. The left in the US do want to destroy the Constitution. The right in the early nineties didn't but wanted to use social pressure. The left uses the courts and violence
The Gore's were not "right wing."
The problem here perhaps is the definition of the right in America. In America, the left is relatively easier to categorize (as an agglomeration of socialists, progressives, and other varieties of social & economic collectivists) but the right is generally wrongly described. Frequently, people lump socially conservative evangelicals with Goldwater conservatives, capitalists, fascists, and Trump populists. This makes no sense. For example, traditional (big C Goldwater style) Conservatives are much closer to libertarians than evangelical (small c) conservatives, and are antagonistic to fascism. It is not obvious to me that these groups of people are any more than tangentially related only because of their antagonistic relationship with specific left-wing policies. If my premise is correct, then saying that the right and left are somehow similar in their totalitarian tendencies is incorrect and is just a soft-headed attempt at fairness. If the right is to definitionally to be the opposite of the left than the right should be comprised of social systems and ideologies of individual freedom (e.g., capitalism, classical liberalism, constitutional republicanism). In short, seen in this light, the right is the side that promotes the correct morality that gives rise to the principle of individual rights, which gives rise to the need of a political system that protects individual rights.
So are Trump supporters, or Republicans, or Evangelicals right wing? Sometimes yes and frequently no. If the far left is communist totalitarianism then how is centrally managed fascism it's opposite (which, in real life practice, is identical to communism)? It isn't.
Capitalism is the opposite of communism. There are many varieties of capitalists. From the live-and-let-live libertarian to the Coolidge style pragmatists. The big "c" Conservatives are fundamentally capitalists who believe that only a moral and just society can be capitalist and therefor they attempt to promote socially (small "c") conservative principles. Sometimes this promotion of socially conservative principles crosses over to force, which is obviously wrong (a failing of man) and anti-freedom. However, this is the normal push-pull of a free society created by man. Men are imperfect. Which is why we rely on the constitutional mechanisms of checks and balances and separation of powers, which are foundational to the Constitution.
But the left has almost no tie to individual rights. To the left, socio-economic rights are group rights, not individual rights. They are rights for organized interests: labor unions, farmers, school teachers, old people, blacks, and so forth. These rights encourage citizens to think of themselves as members of groups and to identify their rights with group-self-interests. The more powerful (politically connected) your group the more effective your group would be at obtaining these “rights.” These group rights are conspicuously not attached to obligations. The rights of our Founding Documents – The Declaration and the Constitution – were bound with duties. The right to liberty implies a duty to not take someone else’s liberty. Liberty was the product of virtuous, lawful, and conscientious people. These new rights of the progressives point to a kind of moral anarchy in which rights without obligations become the currency of the State. Rights are now putative claims on resources effectively limited only by other stronger such claims. The result has at best been an uneasy equilibrium of countervailing power.