The Conservative Cave
Current Events => General Discussion => Topic started by: ExGeeEye on December 28, 2012, 09:38:32 AM
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This thread http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,82138.0/topicseen.html reminded me of an exchange I had with my sister. I was pretty proud of it and kept it in the e-mail archive.
She wrote:
It is almost universally assumed* that political positions can be placed along a line from Right to Left. For example, those on the Right want the government to leave them alone, to make money, but they want the authorities to watch closely everyone else’s behavior in bed and what they are reading, listening to, and viewing.
*I think I see one of the problems right there. Do you?
It's an oversimplification. And those of my particular brand of “right wing extremism†want the government entirely unable to “watch†– “closely†or otherwise -- anyone’s private behavior. It is public behavior, and the right of others to be able to avoid it, which concerns us.
In foreign policy they want a big stick— speaking softly is regarded as wimpy.
Untrue. We want our diplomats to speak softly when they say “keep your terrorists off our land, and we’ll keep our soldiers off yours†– and our War Department (as it should be known) ready to wield the stick when called upon. We want our future wars (a) declared, the declarations inscribed in Spencerian script on new parchment and hung up in each state’s Capitol, and (b) fought like WW2, to defeat the enemy and occupy his lands, his daily activities dictated by Generals and Captains and Sergeant and Privates until he learns better manners.
Why, for example, are those who favor laws protecting the unborn also supposed to favor an unrestrained Capitalism that ignores or exploits the weak?
Unrestrained Capitalism strengthens the weak, and gives them the equal opportunity to succeed or fail in proportion to their efforts. Most people don’t know it because we haven’t experienced it since about 1965. Sometime, just for fun you might have a look at what it took to buy a house or open a business then, and now.
[She brought up supposedly less-than-criminally-fascist right-wing leaders like] Franco…Salazar…Reagan
One example of why I believe the left-right spectrum is irreparably broken, and should be replaced with a Less Liberty/More Liberty model.
I am irritated when people say the Nazis were right-wing and the Communists left-wing and that’s why they opposed each other. Not so. The goals of each, racial policies aside, were quite similar. Economically, under National Socialism, the interchangeable Party and State either owned or directed all industry, business and commerce; under Communism, the economic infrastructure was theoretically owned by all of the People, and must needs then be directed (again) by the interchangeable Party and State.
From the point of view of the ordinary citizen, they were for all practical purposes identical.
Under both systems, straying from Party Ideology was the worst offense (even murder, as long as it was done on behalf of the Party, could be praiseworthy – or at least hushed up). Under both systems, a single individual became the embodiment of the Nation, with titles like Leader (Hitler), Father and Teacher (Stalin), Great or Dear Leader (Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il) or simply Chairman (Mao Zhedong).
The greatest commonality of Fascism and Communism is the lack of individual Liberty.
Their greatest enemy – the man who knows what Liberty is, and wants it.
Side note: 2 Corinthians 3:17. This, and the fact that all deeply held religious belief detracts from the public adulation needed to sustain a totalitarian State, is why the religious and especially Christians are persecuted under Fascist and Communist regimes alike – State-sponsored (and State-controlled) “official churches†notwithstanding.
Last thing on this point:
The Nazis wanted to bring about National Socialism within Germany and the greater German Reich. Wherever National Socialism was, there would be (at least de facto) Germany. The Communists wanted to spread Marxism-Leninism around the world, to every nation, with Russia holding great influence, rather like the Vatican having influence over Japanese Catholics without forcing them to change their flag or learn Italian.
The Nazis hated the Communists (in part) because they represented the philosophy of a Jew and a Russian, and denied the primacy of the superior German. The Communists hated the Nazis (in part) because they had set up a Socialist State, and stopped there, while Marxism-Leninism alleged that the Socialist State is merely one of the steps on the path to the shining future of pure Communism.
Some of the economic ideas of the New Deal, especially the National Industrial Recovery Act, used the same economic approach as did these European corporate statists. Such proposals were widely denounced by what we call the Right in America as interference with the sacred right to do business as one pleases. How could these same ideas be right-wing in Europe and left-wing in the U.S.?
It could be argued that Europe is so far to the left that what we have to look left to see, they can only see by looking right. I disagree. I’ve already said I think the left-right spectrum is fatally flawed, and it boils down to a greater or lesser degree of liberty.
My sister, who is no more Catholic than I am, had asked these questions after reading something by a Catholic columnist who referenced his religious beliefs. She wrote:
If one considers modern papal social teaching…
Well, most of us don’t. He’s a religious leader, and should be concentrating on getting his followers into Heaven. Of course, if we’re going to deal with the world as it is rather than as we would wish it to be, then we’re at least going to have to acknowledge that what he says carries weight with our Catholic fellow-citizens.
It affirms the right to private property as something peculiarly appropriate to man’s nature. Where to place this teaching on the spectrum has been a big problem for secular observers.
Forget left-right, and put this one toward the “more liberty†end of the scale.
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Seriously, folks-- I believe we need to get away from the left-right spectrum and go toward a less liberty-more liberty model.
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those on the Right want the government to leave them alone, to make money, but they want the authorities to watch closely everyone else’s behavior in bed and what they are reading, listening to, and viewing.
Why does this maddening belief persist? And what can be done about it? For example, it was Tipper Gore who was all up in arms about lyrics in music. It's the assorted DUmmies who want to remove conservative talk radio and Fox from the airwaves/cable. It's the liberal leftists who hide conservative books in bookstores.
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Hi 5 to both if you.