Reagan slammed us backwards at 50 mph? Lordy, we could use another shift into reverse. Our border is a shambles, crime rampant, record ODs, debt progessing alarmingly fast, our education system failing our kids or worse, etc
Totally wrong question to ask, and very intentionally slanted. Bad as it is, I’ve haven’t seen the MSM lauding Ukrainian “nationalism”. I come from a country next to Ukraine and I have a very dim view of Ukrainian nationalism. I do however fully understand that when one country is savagely attacked, it should defend itself and should be praised for doing so, just like the Brits or Americans would do if their countries would be invaded - that’s not nationalism. But my country has often been invaded by Russia, whereas Americans have exactly zero experience of being invaded by a much more powerful neighbor - hence the “right” for Americans to say silly things about things that they have no clue about.
Are you trying to say that having a lot of illegal immigrants crossing the border in search of work, because the politicians of this country can’t agree on adequate measures, is equivalent to having your country reduced to rubble and your children murdered by missiles and cold? If so, you’re just making my point about clueless Americans blabbing about things they have no clue about.
Andy, that was my point later in this thread about abstractions. What is "nationalism" exactly? Should we all agree on a definition? Or is it something that we endless discuss what is in the definition and what isn't? Too many words are wasted that way IMHO. Socialism, progressivism, environmentalism, and so on. If we skip the ism, and go to "does the Ukraine have the right to defend itself?" we would have a different discussion and possibly agree more.
re: NS Lyons, "reality wars" ("virtuals vs physicals")
Nationalism is the opposite of globalism. Nationalism tends to be associated with populism and traditional values and with industrial capitalism.
The ("woke") left is now aligned culturally with digital capitalism, and has abandoned old-school leftist class struggle (opposition to industrial capitalism and finance).
The ("woke") "left" usually sees "nationalism" as representing opposition to global economics and the attitudes of the media-tech elites and the PMC (Ehrenreich, professional-managerial class). The PMC are the media puppets promoting "leftist" notions of globalism and the economic exploitation of the lower middle and working classes.
The word Progressive as use by the Dems is an oxymoron. The stifling of free speech by the PC and the work is not progressive. The defeat of a merit based system is not progressive. The burning of cities and defunding police is not progressive. Let's call the Dems what they really are, not progressive. They are tyrants, pure and simple.
Ukraine has a right to defend itself. It doesn't have a right to my money to fight a US proxy war; or my money to pursue the policies of a demented US president and his authoritarian quasi-dictatorship.
1776, 1812. In the first instance too many Britons thought Britain in the wrong to prosecute the war properly. In the second we had the minor distraction of an existential threat just off-shore. In both instances if we had put our minds to it the USA would have been a footnote in history.
Ukraine should definitely defend itself if it likes. But the US taxpayers are paying for said defense. Certainly makes Ukraine's job easier. Doable, even.
Or we can simplify things, Sharon, and applaud nationalism when it is employed to defend a country (Britain vs Hitler) - and despise it when it is used to attack a neighbor, unprovoked (Putin vs Ukraine).
The British Empire blundered by imposing harsh terms on the Germans after the German's loss in WW1.
By the 1930s, both classical liberalism and socialism were discredited, and the resulting vacuum was filled by fascism, which was a revolutionary blend of populism and nationalism.
Fascism was incoherent because it held to two contradictory notions:
(1) a tribalistic and magical conception of a nation and the triumphant, mystical "will of the people", and
(2) the idea that the tribe-nation had been oppressed and spiritually polluted by other corrupt tribes.
Actual tribes were always afraid of being overrun and enslaved by empires, going back 5,000 years.
Hitler's rise to power was a nationalist restoration of what had been lost in WW1.
Zelensky openly promotes a quasi-nationalist and zionist(!) form of nationalism, which is deferential to NATO internationalism.
That is a complete clusertf*ck inside a shitst0rm, basically turning Ukraine into a giant colonialist outpost for "western aggression" on the fault line of the clash of civilizations.
That hasn't stopped you before; I don't recall the Lakota or Iroquois being in uniform when you were murdering them; nor umpteen others from S. E. Asians down to Afghanis and Syrians. I don't think there is a Western nation that you can name that doesn't have a long catalogue of folk they murdered who weren't in uniform.
I think you might have missed my sarcasm, Steven. (which could have been my fault..)
I was responding to the following previous comment, which helps put mine in perspective:
'Isn’t it fascinating that Ukraine’s border is inviolable but ours doesn’t exist?'
So what Marie is saying is that since Ukraine is defending its border against Russia, why aren't we defending ours? In other words she's treating the flood of migrants from south of the border as invaders - of which I disagree.
The USA has been an empire since about 1899* (Spanish-American War: Cuba, Philippines)
By the end of WW2 the USA became the functional equivalent of the British Empire II
The modern nation state system as originated in the Treaty of Westphalia (1600s) has been bent and warped almost completely out of recognition as a tool of empire-on-empire crime.
The Treaty or Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War in 1648. The European nation states decided to stop killing each other and turn their attention on bringing "civilization" to the unwashed masses of Africa, Asia and the Americas.
The last major Muslim/Ottoman/Mongolian invasion of central Europe (late 1600s) which was an attempt to bring Islamic civilization to the unwashed masses of Europe:
But you see, all that is because the progressives haven’t succeeded in “progressing” us enough yet. We haven’t reached the point yet where we own nothing and are happy.
Sanctimonious progressives can declare “ours is a time of inflection” but I’d say it’s more a time of infection, akin to a fungus that never quite goes away. The kind that inhabits dark, dank, recesses that most life forms choose to avoid.
For years big tech, the security apparatus of “our” government and their MSM lackeys have kept us in the dark place that Orwell warned us of. A place of suppression, lawlessness and outright lies,
But just as with a fungus, the best means of suppressing Orwell’s nightmare is light. For now at least, Elon, Bari, Matt and others are shining a light. It’s up to the rest of us to make sure it shines bright.
Excellent but scary as hell, not least because Dr. Malone knows of what he speaks.
I still think his description of our Covid response as a "mass formation psychosis" was the best description of our nation's loss of its collective mind and self-respect in response to a virus that was really deadly only to the very aged or infirm.
Yes, Dr. Malone was completely right about the pandemic being a case study in mass formation psychosis.
All other concerns took a back seat to maniacal avoidance of infections and obsessive "mitigation measures," and society was ruled by a totalitarian regime based on the calculus of only the most risk-averse individuals.
Whole swathes of the country committed to absurdities even when obviously false. The validity of the absurdities wasn't the point; what mattered was that people believed in the absurdities together. In much the same way, folks bought into The Narrative™ not because it was true, but because it cemented a social bond they desperately needed.
All four pre-conditions needed for mass formation psychosis were also present.
Exactly Bruce, a giant experiment in submission training.
Those in society who are happy to trade a little freedom for safety and security have been spooked into believing they are at risk of imminent death, so mask up forever. And they bend their knees. Primed for the next fake scare.
Also watch Bret Weinstein/Dark Horse podcast interview of a British MD who says the evidence of dangers of mRNA “vaccine” outweight the risks, and they should be withdrawn.
At the beginning, little was known, and we had (and still have) a moral obligation to protect the aged and infirm, the oldest of whom fought wars that MEANT something to our collective freedom (before our "wars"--Vietnam, Iraq, etc.-- basically became attacking tiny countries to keep the military industrial complex running).
The attitude of "well, they're just old and infirm so let's not bother with any precautions to keep them safe" is disturbing, to say the least.
However, once it was determined that the vaccines don't prevent the spread of the virus but DO prevent serious illness and, often, hospitalization the moral requirement was met and we should have returned to normal.
COVID is now being used like a political football. For example, the Supreme Court says people can meet in churches despite COVID but can't apply for asylum in the U.S. because of COVID
Are you not "decent", you are a vile, despicable liar. You probably are not even a "person", rather you are a b0t/tr0ll account set up to post troll scriptz.
This is a common “progressive” mantra - that all of their ideas constitute improvement and all conservative ideas represent regression. The opposite is true in most cases, certainly with respect to the issues you mentioned.
The OP/article is correct that most flavors of "leftism" and "progressivism" are just badly rehashed versions of Christianity.*
"Progressivism" is a rehashed version of 1880s style Victorian moral panics and "missionary imperialism". The first major "progressive" politicians in the USA, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were psychotic warmongers following "missionary" Victorian moral panics (in Wilson's case: Prohibition).
As such, there is no "progress" involved, just the recycling of ancient mythic archetypes in a failed attempt to adapt to modern (rationalist) and postmodern (relativistic-pluralistic) social conditions.
It might be interesting for you to know that north of us in Canada that until recently one of their three major political parties was called the Progressive Conservatives.
I personally think Bush (the second) got his ‘compassionate conservative’ slogan from older ideas from above the 45th parallel.
Conservative thinking can indeed be progressive, just like progressive thinking can encompass conservative values.
Progressives forget the malaise that existed during the Carter presidency, the humiliation of our government in Tehran and elsewhere, the stagflation of the late 1970's etc. I'm with you, I'd take that shift into reverse any day.
I came to point similarly to the economic and social destruction that years of progressive policy (beginning in the 60s) created in the 70s and early 80s. There were certainly some policies implemented in the 80s that have proven disastrous, like the War on Drugs. But those were created after years of spiking crime that was the result of decades of liberal soft on crime policy.
Carter inherited inflation / stagflation from Nixon and Ford and appointed Paul Volker to head the Fed and began raising interest rates to lower inflation in 1977 (sound familiar). It took a couple of years but it succeeded. Hard to blame Carter for hostages being taken from an embassy (he was eventually able to get them released). When 241 marines were killed in their barracks in Beirut Regan cut and ran. Not saying that was wrong but interpretation goes along with what tribe you adhere to as the author suggests.
The Vietnam war's origins begin just after the end of WW2.
The French manipulated Truman into supporting their attempt at regaining control over Vietnam with a small, corrupt faction of Vietnamese Catholics (puppet leaders) in a majority Buddhist country. Very dumb.
Eisenhower and JFK continued that kind of dumb stuff, but it didn't seriously escalate until JFK was President. LBJ/Kissinger of course continued and expanded the escalation significantly, for very stupid reasons.
Historical documentation indicates that McNamara lied to LBJ about the possibility of "winning" the war.
My father was a combat veteran, USAF fighter pilot and B52 commander that saw up close the gross intelligence and political failures of the Vietnam War.
And conservatives apparently forget that Reagan was actually corrupt and illegally engaged in arms shipments that Congress had banned (Iran-Contra scandal).
Yup.....I stopped believing this guy at that phrase as well. I don't recommend going in reverse at 50 mph......but we need a complete but slow reversal on many things. He likes Bernie Sanders economics. WTF!!!!!! He hates big entities....like Corporations......unless it is owned and/or controlled by his favorite entity...........Big Government.
Liberals don't believe in liberty....we need to stop calling them that.
I believe we need to be cautious with labels such as liberal, progressive, centrist, conservative, and "far right extremists."
Each label can be used to praise, to demean, or to refer to reality among certain subsets of our society.
During my nearly eight decades of living, I've watched from afar how propagandists can baffle us with linguistic bull shit to denigrate a class of people, often a group with whom the puppet masters want to start a war.
I agree. The labels have also become a way of forcing folks to pick teams. Once you pick, you’re expected to go with the team on everything and are often bashed if you fail to do so.
Expansion of euthanasia laws in Canada and some European countries-to voluntarily include the crippled and depressed-including teens-as reported- tell's the tale.
" I'll do whatever I can get away with-you can't stop me-big monkey-little monkey- rich monkey-poor monkey -I'm a tyrant for your own good- Little Red Book dunce cap ideologues -we're putting you to sleep anyway- lets not let those vital organs go to waste- you're so brave-do it for your country- sign here- so another (the rich and well connected) can live- besides it's the law."
We're dealing with the criminally insane. And, the criminally insane have compromised American elected political leadership. Compromised not captured. At this moment we're inhabiting bodies ("...born in the middle-die in the middle...") in the eternal present. I suspect that most here will attest to the fact that this is a short ride. The American Constitution and the Bill of Rights it contains is all that matters.
Progressivism always had some very bizarre features, but it has further mutated into something that itself has many "regressive" features, from a social science perspective.
As the author points out, the "woke" faux religion is a re-invention of Christianity, and not in a good way (it is ILLIBERAL, Orwellian, totalitarian and corrupt and it proposes of model of "evil" that is toxic and irrational).
The more general case of cultural regression is related to the "crisis of meaning" that results from social change driven by techno-economic and social disruption.
During periods of disruption of an existing social system (in this case a nation-state), humans tend to regress to tribalistic identification to deal with social disorder.
The OP/article is full of weird contradictions, but I seriously doubt that you can coherently, rationally and objectively support all of your assertions.
How rational and objective can you be in dealing with the insane and irrational disintegration surrounding us? Bad social and economic policy wrought by a mercenary and compromised American elected political leadership in the employ of totalitarian financier's who use Marxist ideologues to subvert our national dialogue. It's the pathology of extreme narcissism and abandonment of the political objectivity, trust and stewardship American's deserve.
Euthanasia laws in Canada and in some European nations have been expanded to include the crippled and depressed. At least that's what's being reported. The use of ideology to consider hacking off the genitals of adolescents is bat shit crazy and a medical establishment willing to exploit the situation for cash is criminal. But, that's just me.
Thanks, hope you and yours have been well and have another yearly rotation on the planet around the nearest solar body that is meaningful and prosperous.
If all that bad stuff is an enemy to be defeated or marginalized to the extent possible, or to be optimistic, "transformed" into something that is not disintegrating. Meta-rationalism will be required to both understand the problem with precision, and to get people to research and "emotionally" invest in "something better"
That is a complex topic, and many references are possible. One of the most important aspects is that current systems are fragile to disruption, so the evolution of anti-fragile systems and ways of thinking/feeling is a big goal.
here in NYC Progressives have made great accomplishments - they actually managed to bring rampant crime back after the glorious and safe Bloomberg years
"Progressives" are Orwellians, and they delude no one more than themselves. This article is a cheap trick - a declaration that there is no "right side of history" followed by a series of calm assertions that historical figures who opposed "progressivism" were on the wrong side of history.
This is done unironically, partly because the author is stupid and partly because the author assumes that his audience is stupid.
Bari Weiss et al host this tripe partly because they share the author's worldview and partly because they believe that we must have intelligent dialogue between people of different views, and that idealism blinds them to the fact that there are ideologies in this world that fundamentally preclude the concept of honest debate.
There are preconditions to civilization, and there are a growing number of people in our world who insist on rejecting those preconditions. The civilized way to deal with such people is to exclude them from society, not to try to "compromise" with them.
I think you are being mighty unfair to the writer. He’s not writing it for people who already disagree with him. He’s writing it to progressives. He’s encouraging debate. You aren’t going to convince progressives by showing how wrong they have been.
The "progressives" that are capable of rational debate are a vanishing, nearly extinct species.
Most of the sane ones have already abandoned the faux religion of "wokeness" and are increasingly open to understanding that the ideology is incoherent on many other levels, such as promoting the marginalization of the working classes by the "woke" upper-middle classes and promoting globalist war mongering via an alliance with the military-industrial-complex.
The violence that most "progressives" have done to their own best ideas is catastrophic. They are puppets of evil politics and digital capitalism.
It is inevitable that any attempt to rescue "progressivism" will be incoherent and garbled while it still clings to the idea that "progressivism" was anything other than a passing and out-of-touch historical trend that needs to be replaced by something better.
You would be right, Greg - except for the inconvenient fact that Reagan (of all people) signed into law the largest amnesty for illegal immigrants in history. So large in fact that it has informed Republican altitudes towards illegals in this country ever since - as in, zero forgiveness.
I could go on, like how debt mushroomed under Reagan as he embraced supply side economics by lowering taxes but increased spending, but you get the point.
Reagan made America feel good about itself, after Carter did the opposite- and I guess that’s worthy of applause.
I didn't miss those. Debt was less than 40% of GDP back in the Reagan days; well over 100% now. which is worse? Amnesty was an attempt to fix a problem wheras now the administration just denies we have a problem. which is worse? Correct Reagan made us feel good about ourselves and about being American. Biden calls half the country ultra super duper MAGA WAGAs or some such demented phrase and says all of them are threats to Democracy. Which is worse? Reagan played a big part in tearing down that wall and the dissolution of the USSR, Biden left folks behind in Afghanistan, watched as Russia started a war to rebuild the USSR, did zip while N Korea and Iran escalated nuclear programs. Which is worse? What i see is a country rushing towards a cliff, so yes I want to shift to reverse before we hurtle over the edge
Right on many counts - except you might want to spread the blame. Debt is way over100% of GDP since Reagan, but lets count the years - since 1988 we’ve had 16 yrs of GOP rule, 18 yrs under Dems. Both parties are guilty. And yes we have a horrible situation at the border. Biden has completely screwed it up, but then again there has been a problem down there for decades and no one has solved it. Trump had a Congress all to himself for two full years but he and the GOP were so hapless they couldn’t even put up a wall he campaigned on.
Iran and nukes - what would you like us to do? Bomb them? Give the job to the Israelis? The deal that Trump triumphantly ripped up was flawed, but now that he in his wisdom walked away from it, Iran is closer to nuclear weaponry than ever before.
Trump’s little love in with North Korea’s child king? He said he loved him. My. My.
When the act was!n’t consummated the little boy started firing missiles left right and center.
You say that Biden watched as Putin decided to become mean. After Trump’s vomit inducing performance on bended knee with Vladimir in Helsinki five years ago - I wonder what Trump would have done to stop Putin had he still been in power. Do you think he would have supported Ukraine and NATO? I don’t think so. Trump would have folded like a house of cards and perhaps have given Putin a wink and a nod before his tanks crossed the border.
Btw, you are right about Afghanistan. It was a ghastly pullout, poorly executed by Biden and based on a poor plan by, well, his predecessor.
Have you read the SIGAR reports, or summaries of them?
Afghanistan went south when Obama decided that it was a bad war, but he didn't have the spine to end it himself. Instead, years and years of more corruption and more dysfunction set in, leading to the inevitability of a bad outcome and pullout.
UNDER OBAMA, MOST OF THE MONEY THE USA POURED INTO AFGHANISTAN WAS USED TO BRIBE THE TABLIBAN, NOT ACTUALLY HELP THE PEASANTS.
Biden made very specifically stupid decisions about the pullout because he is an incompetent, senile blunderer that made a bad situation worse than it should have been.
Biden is a profoundly corrupt, senile puppet, like all corporate Democrats.
Clintons politically exploited the Bosnian War to move the Democratic party in the direction of war mongering, via a bizarre constant drumbeat of absurd hate rhetoric toward Russia.
At the same time, Clintons threw the industrial working classes under the bus by adopting Carter-Reagan's neoliberal economics.
If Trump had been re-elected in 2020, Putin would not have had any reason to invade Ukraine, because Trump was the foreign policy anti-dote to the psychotic war mongering of the corrupt neolib-neocon corporate democrats (Clintons, Obama, Biden).
The corrupt corporate Democrats are little more than puppets of the military-industrial-complex and the Deep State.
Trump was on his way to dismantling NATO with his demands for more European funding if his foreign policy team didn't stop him, mercifully. Watching Trump interact with Putin in Helsinki or Putin's cronies in the White House, one wonders just how compliant he would have been to Putin if in 2021 he had been in power.
Putin could easily have surmised that Donald wouldn't have too much to say about an incursion into Ukraine, and certainly would not send weapons Zelensky's way. So Putin would have walked right in confident that no one would stand in his way, Europe being rudderless without American leadership.
I admit Hillary has a tendency towards bellicosity, but then again so did Dick Cheney via Iraq, Afghanistan (never mind Kuwait). Neo cons come in many flavours.
I was around for that. He did that in return for a promise from Democrats to reform immigration. A promise they promptly reneged on. And while I cannot speak on behalf of anyone else it has indeed informed my opinions regarding illegal immigration (by which I mean those who come first and ask later). It also informed my opinion of Democrats. So if you want to blame Reagan do so, he was snookered, but in my estimation that means the Democrats and Democrats alone are responsible for the current failure. The Reagan Amnesty was what, 11,000,000? That have lived here securely and reproduced freely, many have brought extended family members and send vast sums of American dollars back to their country of origin. It is insane.
But Reagan in my mind never regretted signing the bill. Because at that point it had nothing to do with ideology. He, to his credit, pragmatically understood that he had to accept the reality that was on the ground at that point in time.
In terms of failure - I only take issue with your assertion that only one party is at fault. Bush had eight years to affect change. Nothing. Trump had a compliant Congress for two years and got nothing! Not even his egregious wall (which might have been effective, albeit bluntly).
Suffice to say that both sides of the aisle own this one, imo.
I don't take issue with Reagan for signing it. I take issue with the Democrats for reneging on their promise to reform immigration. I assume your reference to Bush was to the latter Bush as you specified 8 years. It is true he had a Republican Congress for 4 of the eight but he also was contending with 9/11 issues shortly after he took office. Trump did not have a supportive Congress for his first two years despite the fact that it was Republican. But the Democrats did nothing under Clinton, Obama, nor Biden when their party controlled Congress and presumably their President would have signed any bill they passed.
I do agree both parties seem content to do nothing. Probably because they see no way to line their pickets/coffers. Pardon my cynicism.
IF you actually look at what Barbara Jordan said on behalf of Clintons in the mid to late 1990s about immigration (C-span archives), the Jordan-Clinton border policies were what would [now] be considered "far right".
Jordan-Clinton policies STARTED THE BORDER BARRIER CONSTRUCTION near San Diego, supposedly stopping millions of illegal immigrants.
I didn't assert anything like that. Both major parties/ideologies are pure dysfunction, pure corruption and pure hypocrisy on illegal immigration and a number of other major issues.
My guess is that even if the wall was built (necessary, but not sufficient), a military occupation of a 100-200 mile wide buffer zone in Mexico all along the border would be necessary to come close to stopping illegal immigration and smuggling. Most of the current population of illegal immigrants should be given a choice: prison camps, temporary deportation to the border buffer and a 5-10 [year] period of security service there in exchange for gaining legal residency, or permanent deportation back to country of origins, or similar.
A long-term solution would also require an international effort at fixing the broken politics and economies of source countries, to the extent possible.*
Most people are too ill-informed to understand how practical solutions are needed, no matter how much they might "offend" their brainwashed attitudes.
Vd. sabe que yo he mandado veinte años y de ellos no he sacado más que pocos resultados ciertos:
[] 1º) La [latin] América es ingobernable para nosotros.
[] 2º) El que sirve una revolución ara en el mar.
[] 3º) La única cosa que se puede hacer en [latin] América es emigrar.
[--->] 4º) Este país caerá infaliblemente en manos de la multitud desenfrenada, para después pasar a tiranuelos casi imperceptibles, de to dos colores y razas.
[] 5º) devorados por todos los crímenes y extinguidos por la ferocidad, los europeos no se dignarán conquistarnos.
[] 6º) Si fuera posible que una parte del mundo volviera al caos primitivo, éste sería el último periodo de la [latin] América...
Letter near the end of his life (November 9, 1830)
As you know, I have led for twenty years and have obtained only a few certain results:
[latin] America is ungovernable.
He who serves a revolution plows the sea.
The only thing one can do in [latin] America is emigrate.
This country will fall unfailingly into the hands of the unbridled crowd and then pass almost imperceptibly to tyrants of all colors and races.
Devoured by all crimes and extinguished by ferocity, the Europeans will not deign to conquer us.
If it were possible for one part of the world to return to primitive chaos, this would be the last period of [latin] America.
Gutiérrez Escudero, Antonio, ed. (2005),
"6. Carta al general Juan José Flores, jefe del estado de Ecuador (Barranquilla, 9 de noviembre de 1830)
[Letter to General Juan José Flores, head of state of Ecuador, Barranquilla, November 9, 1830"]
(in Spanish), Simón Bolívar: aproximación al pensamiento del Libertador (approximations to the thoughts of the liberator), Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos (CSIC), Sevilla, p. 12, retrieved on 2017-11-06
Reagan was dumb. Right wingers are hypocrites for supporting him.
Reagan and other "corporate" Republicans loved (and still do love) illegal immigrants because they can be exploited for low-wage labor to increase profits.
Reagan-style neolib/neocon politics were adopted by Clintons, Obama, and Biden to economically destroy the working classes and engage in psychotic war mongering.
blaming one of the two factions of the corporate-state uniparty for their dumb shared policies is dumb, unless considerable precision is used to differentiate between them.
the corporate "right" wants cheap illegal labor to exploit to increase profits.
the corporate "left" wants to pander to their brain-dead "woke" ideology to get votes.
fyi:
When I click on a substack email notification, I just see the response in my web browser.
In the web browser, clicking "Return to thead" usually doesn't take me to the previous comments, except the first comment in the thread.
Richard Nixon gets all the blame for starting the War on Drugs, but it was Ronald Reagan who escalated it to the point where it entrenched the criminal illegal drugs monopoly as a cornerstone institution in the political economy and popular culture of the US.
Reagan- whose attitudes and policy approach were comfortably in line with the near consensus of his generational age demographic, in support of Zero Tolerance drug criminalization- was well-intentioned, but disastrously misguided. The Drug War policies that were initially escalated by the Reagan administration have done massive, catastrophic harm to this country.
As for the long-term results of Reagan's economic policies-
Proud to be a progressive? Think we need more? Reflect on this history--Woodrow Winston was the progressive who ushered in the great administrative state, better known now as the swamp of people who run Washington and our lives and who can’t be fired. We now have a DOJ directing its attention against American parents, calling them domestic terrorists, and we have people imprisoned since Jan 2020 who haven’t been given a trial. Then we have FDR and LBJ who initiated, and then expanded, the great welfare state. Now we have millions of people who pay no taxes, don’t work, and suck off the taxpayers who do. We have reached a point now where not working is a “right”. We print money to fund this and are trillions of dollars in debt. Progressives have destroyed academia and K-12 education with woke crap and are sexualizing little children. They have taken over media and social media and control what we can know and feed us lies. They are policing us in shocking ways that would make McCarthy smile, so much so that people are invoking “1984”. Is this the direction of history you yearn for? Is this what you call the “right side of history”?
The enlightened "progressive" will continue to believe those are all good things but will discover after twenty years that the phrase "right side of history" is not appropriate.
As if that wasn't obvious from the very first time they used it.
'Good things' mean different things to different ideologies. Theoretically, anything that hurts someone else is bad. But it's a sliding scale. Jefferson said as long as you don't break my bones, you can believe -- not necessarily do -- what you want. A generation seems to have lost the distinction. On the practical side real harm means that people who shoot, rob, and beat up other people need to be taken off the streets. Instead, old people, Asians, and Jews are targets with legs in New York City. Half of New Jersey's cars are now in Brazil. The reason: enforcement of the law would be too harmful, too unjust, for the criminals, especially those innocent, repeat offender teens in your kitchen at 4 a.m., with a gun, who made off with your car and your watch. They mustn't lose their freedom to steal. For your family, actually being unsafe is aces. In New Jersey, the same families are being burglarized twice, by the same offenders. There is no fear of the law; the "moving forward" new justice system is unjust to the burglarized, the coldcocked. Deal with it. There's a creeping blob - like the movie, it just 'keeps getting bigger and bigger'-- of what defines hurt, what exactly it is that makes someone in 2023 America versus say, Somalia, "unsafe." And who, with impunity, can inflict harm at will. Expressing one's opinion on what constitutes being a woman inflicts irreparable harm and can get you fired. In the name of a perversion of safety, the actual harm's been done to you. No matter one's views on abortion, AG Garland allowed unlawful, threatening 'protests' outside justices' homes and Biden minions encouraged it. Meanwhile, Garland accused Louden County parents opposed to indoctrination of their kids --and erasing earned scholastic merit --
of being 'terrorists.' Helicopters hovered over school board meetings - but not over the justices homes. Nothing much happened to the anarchist mobs who turned our cities into barbecue pits, either. The actual harm was done the residents of Portland, Seattle, Chicago. The only journalist who wrote about that, at least in a major publication, was Nellie Bowles. Both those mobs and the ones that broke into our capitol are threats to a civil, livable country. The left will not acknowledge the double standard. We need more people saying both are bad.
re: "The only journalist who wrote about that, at least in a major publication, was Nellie Bowles."
yep, because the "major (mainstream) publications" were colluding with corrupt elements in the national security agencies to do "narrative control" in the commercial media.
and now the twitter files have exposed how toxic and corrupt the collusion between mainstream commercial media, social media platforms and the national security apparatus was.
and of course the mainstream media is ignoring or lying about the twitter files, which is consistent with their long history of that kind of bs.
As are the modern "elites". They just expanded the application of their horrendous policies. They are far from elite. They are just the largest hogs at the trough.
More than obama/holder? No way. For you to be correct absolutely nothing before Wilson would have been seen in a racist lens and everything afterwards was. Possibly a tie, but that's as far as your thesis could possibly go.
Read American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace,and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis by Adam Hochschild. He was so much more than a racist and eugenicist.
It's a history book about the late 1910s and early 1920s and how the United States was roiled by violent social unrest, paranoia, government censorship, mass surveillance and repression, lynchings and pogroms. It not about the war but what happened here during and after the war. How the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 was used to declare any kind of anti- war sentiments criminal. How novelists and playwrights were arrested. It became a federal offense to send seditious news papers and magazines through the mail. The Department of Justice deputized civilian vigilantes with over 250 thousand members into American Protective League. They tapped phones, placed bugs, raided homes. I'm not done reading it, but you get the gist. I knew some of this but never realized how contentious it really was.
Yep. There was a "secret" civil war between labor radicals and industrialists from 1890 and 1915, which was a major part of the "violent social unrest" and "repression".
Sounds a lot like the crisis ("crisis") of today. Which kind of makes this FP author's point: that people tend to believe they're living in a uniquely critical moment in history, when really it's more same old, same old. Learning we're not, that this is just a reprise of a century ago, is actually oddly comforting.
Exactly. Government overreach, and censorship. An overbearing judicial system that's out of control. The difference now is that we're all interconnected, and digitized. Our government deputized all these social media companies and the people who work for them to censor us. Instead of 250 thousand people, who knows how many their are.
Yes and let's not forget that the despicable Woody and his pals yukked it up watching the cartoonishly racist Birth of a Nation in the White House. A more loathsome human is hard to conjure.
I’ll join you if when we both wake up CEO’s aren’t making ten million dollars and more annually in salaries and stock options in charge of companies that don’t make a dime. If productivity works at the bottom, as it should - it should work at the top as well.
Absolutely. This used to be the case before the 1980s. Bosses and workers can both do very well. Since the 1980s, 99% of the productivity gains have travelled upwards.
"Many observers who say that they cannot understand how anyone can be worth $100 million a year do not realize that it is not necessary that they understand it, since it is not their money.
"The idea that everything must 'justify itself before the bar of reason' goes back at least as far as the 18th century. But that just makes it a candidate for the longest-running fallacy in the world."
I get the sense you didn't read the article I linked. It's quite short.
First off, I want to be clear that you're entitled to your judgment. I wasn't positing that it's right or wrong. Rather, I was pointing out that the ability of outsiders to understand why a CEO gets paid so much has zero bearing on whether it's the right decision.
Here's what really gets me when it comes to CEO pay. Everyone is primed and ready to rush to judgment about the pay of a CEO for a company they probably don't even work for, typically judging that they get paid too much. On the other hand, there seems to be no interest whatsoever in trying to figure out what the reasons are behind the decision that actually gets made. Obviously someone had to decide to give the CEO that much money, which means they had a reason to do it. Is no one interested in their reasons?
As far as productivity is concerned, you have to look at it both ways. Not just how much money is to be gained but what could be lost. A CEO of a large company can, by poor decision making, cost the company billions of dollars. If billions of dollars are at stake, is it really such a bad decision to pay millions of dollars to get the right person?
SW was founded by an operations guy, and when he retired the airline was driven into the ground by bean counters.
Jordan was picked to return the airline to an operations-oriented management style, to correct the deep damage caused by the bean counters. He just got started dealing with the damage from the bean counters and COVID.
Upgrading IT infrastructure in a previously dysfunctional organizational culture is almost impossible, and usually very expensive.
According to the "Chaos Reports", there has been an overall 80% project failure rate in the IT industry, historically (probably somewhat of an exaggeration to get people's attention on an actual major problem).
But in the sense that paying millions of dollars to someone who might be involved in billions of dollars of business decisions and accept it even though it might be spectacularly unsuccessful (the recent troubles of Southwest Airlines comes to mind) then isn’t it worth questioning?
Global finance and digital capitalism are expanding, and hiding behind "woke" nonsense pushed by a deeply corrupt mass, commercial media mostly inhabited by the PMC (professional-managerial class, see Ehrenreich).
After giving birth to the PMC, Industrial-managerial capitalism is now in decline (in the USA).
Ah, the incomparable hubris of the left's Great Plan for Humanity. All it requires is that we the people recognize that we are too stupid to run our own lives - but they are not. Smart enough to make the money, since we do all the work - but not smart enough to spend it, since they do all the thinking. The problem is that so far they are batting zero, but of course that is because "real socialism (a.k.a. communism) has never been tried."
I rather like Lincoln's response to the group of clergymen who visited the White House during the War of Yankee Aggression and reassured the president that they had prayed on the matter, and God was on his side.
His response? "I'm not so concerned with whether God is on my side as I am whether I am on God's side."
We, the unwashed masses, may not be that smart, but we know right from wrong. And we know that an ideology which, instead of being adopted voluntarily, must be shoved down the public's throat by force, is wrong. And evil. They are not on God's side.
I love that quote by lincoln. I think those of us who are on God's side see those who are not as very unhappy people. They seem to have no joy or pleasure in life only complains and misery. I live in Mexico and what impresses me most is the joy with which people live under what are very trying economic circumstances. The children are the happiest most well-adjusted kids I think I have ever seen. Generations of a family are together always grandma is never shoved into a nursing home or an assisted living place. Kids are not bundled off to daycare and left there to be raised by someone else as the parents go to work so they can buy more stuff from Amazon or a bigger house with granite countertops. I have no problem with people desiring such things. I just wish that the desire did not come with such unhappiness. I am in my older years, and I am so glad I am here where I can see the joy that love and peace can bring. I wish that for all of my us friends and 2023.
Well understood. It was the same in the mountain community where I grew up. Coming from that culture and having worked as a coal miner made me a real outsider in the indoor world of medical school, although I was the same age as everybody else.
Our psychiatry rotation was interesting. The professors basically turned the medical students loose to manage patients by themselves; we had a "team meeting" with staff a couple of times per week; otherwise we were on our own. I liked to say that we entertained ourselves by screwing with the patients' brains, and the higher-ups entertained themselves by screwing with us.
Many of our patients were depressed middle-aged women and old people staring at the prospects of nursing homes or living alone until the nursing home was inevitable. The self-centered staff doctors labored mightily to turn us into equally self-centered young doctors - with pretty good success. They were adamant that old folks had no claim on their children's lives. Most of my colleagues bought into that nonsense, but for me it was the prosaic turd in the punch bowl. No compromise: You By God took care of your parents, just like they had taken care of you.
I guess the staff and other studs, as we called ourselves, thought they could prevail by force of number, but they didn't understand the Highlander mind. As Col. Creighton Abrams - later Maj. General Abrams of Abrams tank fame, told the 101st Airborne troops at the Battle of the Bulge, "Well, it looks like they've got us surrounded. The poor bastards." I finally ended all conversation by informing the chief of the department that his parents had done a very poor job in raising him. "The poor bastards."
The poor bastards. God. How I ever graduated is still a mystery.
But-we are that smart-it's just hard to think straight when battered senseless by the psyop. I'm hoping subscription journalism is a first step forward.
Well I guess Bari and the Free Press team gotta find some lefties to write here. However, any writer who can claim that history goes in reverse at 50 miles per hour and then name Putin, Trump, and, for fuck’s sake, Reagan, as examples has no credibility. Reagan? Seriously, he lead from the White House and brought this country out of the depths of economic, social, and political miasma of Prog Hero Jimmy Carter. And a writer who would align and name ANY American President with Putin has serious cognition and and comprehension issues.
I think one point of the article was to highlight that one side’s “the end is happening” is another side’s “there’s hope for our country...” I sensed criticism of today’s progressives that view everything as a threat to our democracy while using religious-strength conviction to push their nonsense. I didn’t take him mentioning Reagan as a dig--rather the perfect example of someone half the country (or more) deeply admired while the rest of the country viewed as satin himself. The point being the two sides have always been and will likely be different. And it’s asinine for one side to think it is correct on all matters and needs to force the other side to see the light.
Perhaps I’m way off but I appreciated the humility in him calling out progressives for their flawed self-perceptions.
Except that he did nothing of the sort. This article was a ruse - the author pretended to reject the concept of a "right side of history" while repeatedly promoting the idea that "progressivism" is right and its opponents are history's greatest evils.
The people on the "left" (including "progressives") think that the flaws in leftism can be fixed. The main point of this article is to describe one or more fixes.
I've been watching these kinds of debates for decades, and the sad reality is that the people proposing to fix the "left" are invariably stabbed in the back by another dominant, usually corrupt, faction on the left.
The fact is that the "left" has always either (1) lacked a coherent model of human nature and social order, or (2) rejected those things.
So, as George Orwell found out when fighting "fascists" in the Spanish Civil War, it was far more likely that he was going to be killed because of fratricidal infighting between communist factions than by the "fascists".
Absolutely right - one thing that I don’t find much on Common Sense or now Free Press is nuance. It black or white and the good guys have to win at all costs. I voted for Reagan as a 30 year old and wouldn’t support any Republican today except for Liz CHENEY 2024. How’s that for nuance?
I was a bit disappointed that this turned in to a bashing of progressives. I'd prefer we drop the labels and just discuss issues. I have no doubts that there are issues that "progressives" and "conservatives" actually agree on. The labels allow us to write off others without having discussions.
You grossly misappropriate blame for the "bashing of progressives".
Only a left-wing ideologue could read this article as a good-faith attempt to reach across the aisle, rather than the repeated, gratuitous slander of people who are far better human beings than its author.
The bashing of progressives pretty much proves the author's point about people going to their tribe and not thinking for themselves. After he commented on Reagan it was inevitable which is too bad as was an excellent piece.
Protecting our democracy is not a job for half measures. Self sacrifice, courage and leadership. Is that what I want in a leader? Hard yes. 6 years ago I wouldn’t have supported her as much - we live in a vastly different world today. I trust her completely with protecting our most valuable asset.
What exactly is a neocon? That has never been explained to me. As far as I can tell, it's anyone who doesn't support the left. We are supporting a war right now and it isn't conservatives doing it.
Neoconservatives were originally people on the "left" that turned against the left during the cold war in opposition to communist totalitarianism.
To keep their racket ("controlled opposition") going after the end of the cold war, they promoted other forms of war-mongering.
The corrupt, corporate Democrats have adopted many previously "conservative" positions, including neoconservative war mongering. They have mutated into puppets of the military-industrial-complex.
Clintons. 1990s. Bosnian wars. Wag the Dog: "win" in domestic politics by fomenting hatred of Russia to sound "tough on foreign policy". Sound familiar? Biden is doing the same stupid shit with Ukraine.
That's how I felt after reading this. Speaking and listening to "the other side" is our way forward, as long as both "sides" adopt beginning the conversation.
This is a great author. Excellent Sheep is an amazing book. But he lost me when he said people still like Jackson. Jackson??
The reality is the progressives already won. The left never gives back power once it gets some. That’s why the arc always bends to the left. The right won’t win another election.
Like I said, the right won’t be able to win again. They couldn’t in the Soviet Union, they can’t in China, anywhere the left takes power, they make sure their arc of history never goes right again.
Bruce, that has been my great fear as well. I doubt that a Republican will ever be elected president again. The party is not unified even over something like speaker of the house. I am hopeful that Harmeet Dillon will wrest control from the current head, of the RNC and modernize the way we do elections. Forgive any capitalizations that I have been ignoring, because I am forced to dictate the great majority of any thoughts.
I think the writer attempted to describe the reversals these leaders represented - he is not comparing the leaders themselves as you suggest, Running Man.
Reagan reversed fifty years of liberal interventionist policies, Putin reversed the protocol European order that has existed at least since the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in ‘68. And Trump upended top down political discourse and stasis between two moribund parties with bottom up support.
OK, your comment made me pause and reflect. It is possible that was his approach - I'd stated in an earlier comment that perhaps he was trolling the readership or engaging in some sarcasm. Given his deep socialist roots, however, I still have my doubts. I conclude that either his is not a thoughtful writer (thus laid out that "comparison" without thinking through how it could be received - that is, not an effective nor articulate advocate). But I still have my doubts about his view.
"We revile Andrew Jackson, Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, but they applaud them." I've been a conservative for most of my life (I'm 71) and I've never spoken with another conservative who didn't revile Joe McCarthy.
Nixon did more things economically left than Clinton , the author needs to ditch the caricatures. Imagine when he finds out Reagan cut nuclear weapons and amnestied a whole bunch of immigrants.
I’m not a fan of Reagan’s policies in general , but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t accomplish some good, maybe great things. This Manichaen view of presidents isn’t helpful. It kills nuance for the sake of dogma.
You’re right about Nixon, Rob. And not only economically. He brought in the EPA and came oh so close to national government funded health care (imagine that).
If Nixon were alive today he would be branded a flaming liberal by most Republicans.
Nixon had no choice at the time, he was forced into compromises with "liberal" Democrats and voters.
The corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats of the 1960s were nationalists.
Corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats now are (mainly) globalists/internationalists, puppets controlled by global finance and media-tech oligarchs, but more so Democrats.
The big schizm in the Republican party is between working class and traditional populist-nationalists (Trumpism) and corporatists.
The corporatists in both parties will use old tricks to pull the wool over the eyes of populists, including Trump supporters, by using fake populist rhetoric.
The fight today over Speaker of the House is a perfect example of the precarious position of the populist-right, just as Bernie getting stabbed in the back was a good example of the populist-left getting stabbed in the back by corporate Democrats.
There was a significant faction of populist, progressive Republicans in the early 1900s.
Until the 1960s-80s, when Dixiecrats (mostly ) left the Democratic Party and became Republicans, there were many "liberal" Republicans, such as my father (USAF combat veteran, fighter pilot), descendent of a Union Army combat veteran.
My father left the Republican party and became an independent because he was deeply disgusted when Reagan become Governor of California in the 1960s. Millions have followed.
So your USAF father was a Rockefeller Republican. Congratulations. Do they even exist anymore? They're extinct.
Would Mitt Romney qualify?
So if you count Theodore Roosevelt as the progressive Republican, of the late 19th or early 20th century as he seduced America with his swash bucking life style and anti trust busting ideals, I stand corrected. Good on you.
But except for that interregnum when the hell was the GOP even interested in the working man? Hoover? (laughably). Nixon (you know, maybe..). Reagan (seriously?). Basically from 1980 on the GOP's mo was just cut taxes and let the market do the rest. No policies necessary.
Your assertion that Republicans ended slavery is right, but was the Republican Party of 1940, 1960, 1980, 2000, 2010 the same? Is the 2022 iteration the same?? In name only.
Republicans are a joke (as the House counts votes for an impotent Speaker held hostage by the far Right) and of course the Democratic Party is no better.
You say I'm ignorant of history, so don't join me in my ignorance.
No, not just a “glitch”. His whole premise is flawed but couched nicely in a critique of his own side. He’s a Trojan horse. I would say watch this one far more closely than the ones openly calling for so called “Progressive” ideology to be implemented. At least we know who they are.
Me either. My folks have always opposed nazism, fascism, socialism, and communism. Maybe that is why I easily recognize it for what it is no matter what they call it these days. I prefer American exceptionalism.
Andrew Jackson saved America at New Orleans and Richard Nixon was hated by the left because he exposed the Soviet spies in our government. The proggies still think the Rosenbergs were framed innocents, despite the KGB records proving their guilt.
TxFrog, I am enjoying your reference to Alger hiss. I was thinking about Whittaker Chambers this morning and how the left hated him for so many bogus reasons, some of which had to do with the fact that he wasn’t from the upper class. what a highly intelligent man he was, and I remember reading his wonderful autobiography many years ago.
Andrew Jackson won a battle at New Orleans against the British after the peace treaty ending the War of 1812 has already been signed. Hardly saving America.
He was also a genocidal maniac who instituted the Trail of Tears deportation of the Five Civilized Tribes -- which term I use to make very clear I'm absolutely not woke and to remind the reader that that the Indians who were force-marched to Oklahoma (with their slaves) were removed because they were successfully competing economically with Americans of European ancestry, not to protect anyone from savagery. (You can't pass a $20 bill in a lot of places in Oklahoma for good reason -- can we please get Harriet Tubman on the $20's?). And... Jackson was the founder of the modern Democratic Party. Hardly a great hero for American conservatives.
My thoughts precisely. One has to wonder if the author actually spoke with people who “applaud” such figures, or made a rhetorical leap into oblivion with that statement.
There is no “version” of history: there is only what actually happened. And now there are too many unemployed PhD’s in the field who have learned that an education in the propaganda business of “history” does not make for a career.
Unfortunately, there are versions of history. I once knew a Russian pianist who with her ballet dancer husband and two small children had escaped the Soviet Union just before it fell. They were living near Philadelphia trying to adjust to a different way of life. She told me that one of the hardest things for them was dealing with the gradual certainty that everything they thought they had known about history in the last hundred years was a lie. She said they flat out didn't believe it at first. But as time went on and they became more accustomed to the diversity of sources and opinions and the freedom of opinions and their interplay, it crept up on them until suddenly it struck them like a physical thing. She described it like an awful sensation, like nausea. It sounded horrible.
One of the difficult things for her husband was that here everyone assumed he was gay, whereas in Russia that was less common in his line of work.
I heard her play at a private concert once, mostly Chopin. It was one of the only two times I have found myself crying uncontrollably while listening to music. The other time it was at a Horowitz concert.
"History" and many other things can be interpreted differently.
1. facts, data and evidence are best seen through objective, systematic, rational thought, but they frequently are seen subjectively, sometimes by corrupt, biased people
subjective, emotive narratives are frequently more influential.
objective narratives are hard to learn, and are usually a minority position.
one of the triumphs of western civilization was to advance the interests of a rational-scientific minority, via high-social-trust in social institutions, such as Constitutional order (as opposed to medieval social order, such as mythic religion and Fealty Oaths).
2. interpretive narratives vary, and are easily corrupted
3. meta-narratives can allow people to escape their interpretive biases and echo chambers, but not in any absolute way.
That was also my thought. I don't know what conservatives he hangs around with, but I have heard very little applause for any of those three he mentions. The closest I've heard anyone come was an assertion that Nixon was not as bad as he is generally regarded. Oh, I've also heard a few people point out (in very recent years!) that, despite how despicable McCarthy was, it seems that he was not wrong after all about the infiltration of Marxists.
I also found Jackson surprising in that group. A populist, certainly, and a likely comparison with Trump. But not a conservative idol that I've ever heard.
The one thing progressives will never understand is that human beings cannot be made to embrace the collective. Humans instinctively care about their own, they will happily work and struggle and sacrifice for their own. But not for others, especially others who don’t work and struggle too. This simple fact is why progressive collectivism will always fail. And why capitalism with all its warts is the only system that works.
And the elites are no different. They will use whatever advantages they can obtain, whether gained by merit or birth, for further increase of what is only theirs for the benefit of their own. In a capitalist economy this at least also benefits most others who are not elites. In all other economies this is invariably redistributive. That is to say, zero-sum loss to everyone else.
Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried." The same is true of capitalism. Every system develops a black market, and the key word there is MARKET.
Great comment. Even China figured that out. It's hamstrung by total lack of a Rule of Law. I'm surprised the author didn't mention who they arbitrarily confiscated the capital of the Ali Baba billionaire (Jack *?).
I love this stuff. Collectivity versus individuality. Such an old saw.
Yesterday was Sunday. Probably a third of the country was watching the best example of a collective in action. It’s called the NFL. In which both players and owners got together and are getting rich at our expense. Billions of dollars worth. All for payment of a service.
Marx would love it!
They got so good at it the NBA and Major League Baseball followed.
There are so many ways my tax dollar is wasted but most offensive is the county tax that pays for a stadium built to appease a super wealthy association, owners, and players. The stadium is still part of our tax debt, but the team is no longer in the county and the NFL, owners, and players all profited from the move.
This arrangement is an example of corrupt welfare state to the most undeserving people ever.
I do not disagree. As was said, capitalism, warts and all.
Owners, players, leagues of lawyers and layers of government all working together - wink, wink, nod, nod and handshakes all around - and obscene amounts of money flow to all the undeserved.
No one’s at fault since everyone buys in - but then everyone’s at fault, precisely because we all buy in.
Like I said above, millions of Americans are glued to the tube enjoying a hybrid of socialism and capitalism, a collective money making machine unlike any other in the economy, since anti monopoly legislation apparently does not apply to sports leagues.
It is not cooperation. Indeed, it's closer to being the opposite of cooperation. Markets are cooperation. Collectivism sets everyone against everyone else, competing for an ever-diminishing share of the zero-sum.
According to the Oxford Dictionary a collective is a cooperative enterprise. And the NFL is a cooperative enterprise, everyone within it working with each other to advance the goals of the collective. Player and owner alike, splitting the spoils more or less equally.
Perhaps JD, there are more meanings than even you might imagine..The word is applied to more than one situation.
There’s the collective farms of the big bad Soviet Union, of which being cooperative was not exactly a choice. (Perhaps they should have been called forced labour camps instead)
And then there is the more benign example I offered - where everyone involved work together willingly for shared gain.
Collective bargaining - is that a good thing or bad? Does a worker go on strike alone and get nothing? Or get into a union and perhaps get something?
The NFL and other sports leagues go one step further.
In evolutionary terms, humans are adapted to nature via collective intelligence (CI). The oldest forms of CI were kinship-group based. (Ulam lectures, 2008, Santa Fe Institute)
Pre-liberal (classical liberalism) and ILLIBERAL social forms are typically mythic, authoritarian and conformist.
Classically liberal social forms, originally in NW europe, emerged because of the early Church's ban on cousin marriage and the nuclear family, which broke the power of clans. Without clannish cousin-marriage, the gene pool changed as the urban commoner classes grew, literacy and wealth increased, innovation flourished and demand for political participation ("democracy") increased.
Pre-liberal values were based on communion.
Classically liberal values rejected the oppressive features of mythic communion (aristocracy, ecclesiastic elites) in favor of agentic values (individual achievement).
“The trouble with the Maples, and they’re quite convinced they’re right; is that the oaks are just too lofty, and they grab up all the light...
Now there’s no more Oak oppression, for they passed a noble law; and the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw”
Rush
The Trees
In 1967, I was five. My parents were pretty much a minority who actually canvassed for Brewer over Wallace, protested Jim Crow and believed they were doing the right “progressive” thing for others.
By the time dad passed away he said he no longer fit into the world, having been labeled a racist by those he once fought to literally free from genuine violent oppression.
So, history has an arc, and so long as race hustles are careers and cowards remain in positions of real responsibility, America will decline.
Now I wonder if much of the south will declare independence, but this time to avoid being on the wrong end of a saw.
The first year I began to teach in Alabama I had a student whose father worked in the first Wallace administration, until the day after the “stand in the schoolhouse door.” Apparently in the limousine ride back to Montgomery Governor Wallace remarked, “Those rednecks out there think I actually did something.” So this guy’s father resigned his position because he thought Wallace to be a fake. This was 1963. The first time George Wallace ran for governor he was the liberal candidate on race relations. In order to win he became a staunch segregationist politically.
The lesson here is that a politician’s public political views do not necessarily reflect what he believes and often hold their supporters in contempt. In Wallace’s case he only believed in getting elected. Another person who worked with the first Wallace administration told me Wallace had no interest in government policy. So when he had a talented staff (first term in office), things went well. After that his staffs were not particular good and it harm the state’s economic development (as did the segregation laws then in place).
Being from a republican family in the pre civil rights era south, I have trouble trusting any democrat politician because of the ways in which local governments would harass republicans.
Yep, the neo-confederate propagandists/trolls like "Lynne" in these comments are plain liars, distortion artists and creeps. Probably paid by the Alex Jones troll farm or something like that.
Similarly to the "far left" (Frankfurt school, postmodern neo-marxists), much of the "far right" was created by the CIA as "controlled opposition"
Sam I admire your parents and am sorry for your father's disappointment at the end of his days. But the truth is that the Civil War was fought by the Unionists to cement federal domination. And economics. Your people were pawns in their propaganda. Do not play their game.
That's the problem, isn't it? One cannot really wish for slave-owners to have triumphed, even if slavery itself would likely have been over within another few decades. But the rise of Federalism has done and continues to do untold damage. I have to wonder what Lincoln would think, if he could see the end result.
The southern slave system produced such fabulous wealth, such as from semi-mechanized cotton production for export markets, that it caused people's heads to spin at the time.
The fact that Jim Crow state-sponsored terrorism came into existence as a system of post-slavery is a good indicator that a "free south" would not have ended slavery anytime soon, except maybe in some meaningless legal sense that had little or no practical application.
Politics and the legal system in the south was deeply corrupt, and stayed that way until the 1960s.
The Confederate plan to expand to the Pacific and then invade and conquer Mexico and Central America is documented in the archives of the Commonwealth of Virgina.
An expanded agricultural-slave Confederate mini-Empire would have been a severe threat to the Union, which is why it had to be exterminated.
The only unfortunate thing is that a lot more of the Confederate leadership and economic elites were not hung for treason after the war, cleaning up the southern gene pool of sociopathic tendencies and the lingering hate ideologies that persisted through the period of Jim Crow state-sponsored terrorism (1880-1960s).
Ok, so you are neo-confederate. That explains a lot.
The US Civil War was the inevitable result of the earlier US Revolutionary War, which was the inevitable result of the English Civil War, which was the inevitable result of the war between Manorials and Celts/Border Reivers that went on for 100s of years in the medieval era.
The USA's system is based on Manorial culture, not Celtic. Celtic/Border Reiver culture is marginal. The culture of Cavalier slave plantations was defeated and marginalized.
Neo-confederates might win against a weakened Federal-Manorial system, but their legacy will still be medieval and regressive.
Not at all. I'm originally from California for one thing; and had I been alive then would undoubtedly have fought for the North (given my contemporary moral compass). The US Civil war was certainly inevitable short of allowing the fragmentation of the republic which the northern states couldn't allow due to the control of trade up the Mississippi it would have given the south and its consequences for western expansion. That doesn't make the inevitable increase in federal power any less dangerous and lamentable. But it has taken a couple hundred years to get to the point of proving this.
The manorial culture you refer to really only applies to the south at the time, which is where the scot/reivers settled for the most part. I don't at all agree that the "USA system" was based on that. It arose in spite of that. Try reading Mathew Stewart's "Nature's God: the Heretical Origin of American Republic" - it has the most interesting account of it I've yet encountered.
Not sure what it could have explained had I been a "neo-confederate" in any event.
Manorialism was what the feudal system evolved into after the early Church banned cousin marriage in the peasant classes to break up the power of clans (where inbreeding and cousin marriage was common).
It wasn't a static thing, it evolved over about 500 years, toward the "WEIRD" system (Henrich at Harvard).
Higher IQ was selected for because of increased literacy and the spread of market economics along the river and sea trade routes (Hanseatic League, etc.)
High-social-trust ("classical liberalism") increased as Constitutional order replaced medieval Fealty Oaths (clan honor systems).
The urban commoner classes expanded as wealth along the trade routes expanded, scientific and technological innovation expanded, participatory politics expanded (until about 1492).
Expanding Maritime economics and Manorialism co-emerged, eventually the Dutch led the way to free markets and the most "capitalist" (free-market) people migrated to the areas of swamp that were being drained and land was being offered that didn't require fealty to aristocrats.
The Hanseatic-Dutch system of Free Cities and market economics then spread to London, where it was somewhat insulated from political problems and wars on the Continent.
So, the Manorial gene pool is different from the Celtic, Slavic and Roman gene pools.
The Black Plagues intensified the selection for "classically liberal" genetic traits and de-selected for pre-Liberal, clannish, inbred traits, as was especially noticeable in the Celtic gene pool.
"...history is perfectly capable of slamming into reverse and backing up at 50 miles an hour. It happened with Ronald Reagan."
I mean, really? The president who won 46 states... then did such a miserable job of running the country the for four years that he got re-elected by winning 49?
Could it be that his predecessor's presidency had been a failed experiment that needed to be rejected so that a more effective progress might emerge? That's a plausible explanation, I should think.
In any event, electoral politics is in the eye of each beholder. Let's just call it a day: leave it at that.
Who bequeathed us a peace dividend that extended into Obama's terms and set our economy on path of prosperity that endured well into the Clinton and early Bush years? Oh that President Reagan. Would that another such man emerge to save us from the prevailing lunacy.
Well the author did say he was a progressive - and like most progressives today, obviously thinks that this is a good example of ordinary stupid people voting for someone the elites think was the wrong person for public office.
However, I do like his comparison of the elites and Democrats generally with the old 1980’s version of the TV evangelists. Maybe there is a second career as a TV evangelists for a certain retiring NIH official who can tell everyone who doesn’t agree with him they are going to hell.
I didn’t take it as him bashing Reagan. I took it as an example of how one side would see it as the end of the world while the other half saw it as a saving grace. Same thing with DT. There’s people that view him as worse than Satin and were convinced our country was doomed. On the other side, folks put him on a pedestal just below Jesus. And our country did just fine.
Perhaps my interpretation is way off as I’m not typically defending progressives.
The myth that people who voted for Trump "worship" him or "put him on a pedestal" is nothing but of a piece with the "Trump as Hitler" meme. It's purpose is to demonize those who support his programs as slavering stooges, while casting progressives as individuals battling for "democracy." They are anything but that. Slaves to the collective. Nothing more.
Well I know people personally that think Trump walks on water, as do his sons. I would be willing to bet there are folks that love DT without being able to mention a single policy they agree with. Just like there are folks on the other team that hate him without being able to highlight a reason why.
And I didn’t say everyone that voted for Trump worships him but there are some that do. Just like there were some that thought Obama was the savior himself.
My point is humans are tribal and politicians play on that tribalism. The other team is always the greatest threat to our country and our team is always the country’s last hope. It just keeps repeating itself. And I believe that was the author’s message.
How many people do you know who think that Trump walks on water? Because I know exactly ONE--an elderly lady I was in a play with.
My husband and I voted for Trump the second time (not the first) because of how entirely insane the Democrats had shown themselves to be. I've never liked Trump, but the reaction of the Left to him has revealed a great deal about the danger Progressives pose.
More than a handful. Again, some of them fantasize about the sons becoming president as well. I also know plenty of people that voted for trump because of his policies despite not liking him as a person. I never suggested everyone that voted for him believe he walks on water.
And to play devil’s advocate, I remember listening to team red saying “our country won’t survive Obama” for 8 years. That was Fox News’ entire message for 8 straight years—that and the birth certificate.
Both teams play the “our country is in trouble and we are the only way to save it” game. There’s stupidity and fear used by both sides. My hope is people on both sides recognize that the extreme position of both teams prevents us from having discussion and finding compromise that represents the majority.
I also know many people, myself included, who voted for Trump bc I could not bring myself to vote for Hillary.
And I am old enough to remember how the MSM railed against Biden when he ran for President in 1987 & 2008. Their coverage of him was brutal, though it was his own fault because of the many instances of plagiarism and outright lies, which by-the-way, he continues to do.
The difference now is the MSM hated Trump more than they disliked Biden.
It’s all politics, and the American people are at their mercy.
"Well I know people personally that think Trump walks on water, as do his sons."
On the other hand, there are people who, like me, adore his policies and look at his persona with a jaundiced eye. It's called, "having your priorities straight." His policies directly affected me and my country; his personality did not.
Agree! I voted as much FOR Trump as I voted AGAINST Hillary! However, I’ve never been a fan of his personality, but I loved how well my retirement investments earned, how illegal entry at the Border was down, how gas prices were low, how much he was willing, unapologetically, to put America first, among other positive things while he was President.
I’ve yet to understand WHY the term ‘Make America Great Again’ is so offensive to the Left, except it came from Trump and their ‘TDS’ won’t allow them to realize ‘MAGA’ is no worse than Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ slogan!
BTW, my retirement investments are down 35% since Biden became President …
I know, I know …
EVERYTHING good that happened under Trump was just because he inherited all good things coming off Obama’s leadership.
And, of course, all the bad crap under Biden is because he inherited Trump’s failures. Or, blame Putin!
You have to remember that Leftists think America was NEVER great, so of course they find the idea of America being great AGAIN offensive.
And of course Leftists project their own biases, assuming that Republicans want the BAD parts of the past back instead of the good ones, partly because they think Republicans are evil and therefore can only want bad things and partly because Leftists cannot think of anything that used to be good, EVER.
Trump is a Druid, or the modern equivalent, a magic thinker. He grew up listening to his Scottish mother speak fluent Gaelic.
Trump's populist rhetoric is anti-policy and thus an appeal to marginalized, traditional, working classes people. Trumps base was originally Appalachian Celts.
Trump was/is a working class, F.U. vote to the corrupt establishment.
Trump's rhetoric is inherently a rejection of the establishment's policy abstractions and a rejection of the establishment's colossal failure to self-correct.
Except in this case "the other team" supports truly evil policies. So let's not equivocate about whether they are intentionally evil or just stupidly so.
I'm not trying to pick on you Bruce but this comment could easily appear on thousands of other substacks that lean left, describing anyone that challenges the left. Hell, I see these comments directed at "right wingers" every day on twitter. I guess my point is when we sum up others with labels, it becomes a barrier to communication. I'm not calling you out because I've done it myself many times. It's easier to see when others do it.
Frankly I don't care what you say or whom you claim to know. I know many who voted for Trump who think he's a bloviating ass but voted for his decent policies. And, btw, no longer support him and look to others now. In dramatic contrast, the other side has well intentioned people who are "nice" but who support maniacal, demonic policies such as mutilating children, opening our borders, releasing dangerous felons, mandating dangerous vaccines for people who don't need them, weaponizing our FBI and stomping on freedom of speech. Good people doing true evil.
Besides the Trump as Hitler meme is puerile and juvenile. If Trump were Hitler, what do you think would have happened to Griffin, Madonna and the other Hollywood clowns who criticized him? A stretch on piano wire and then more brutal tortures. But, of course, none of that happened. Not one person was arrested for a political crime under Trump. Nobody lost any rights. Now contrast Biden's reign of terror and stupidity. It's all so tediously idiotic.
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Which means that we have the right—the duty—to teach others how to live. How to speak, think, eat, spend, make love, raise their children, vote."
Yes. So much of this. THIS is why I became involved in Moms for Liberty (go ahead and judge me). I have young kids and it's scary to see how so many people and entitites think they somehow earned the right to do this. Because my kids are involved now in this so-called progressivism, I won't accept it. At the heart of the matter: I just want to be involved as a parent. But we're called every name under the sun because maybe, just maybe, I don't agree. It's ridiculous how many school board members, administrators and teachers seem to feel (ironically,) privileged enough that they have earned the right to raise my kids and do it better than me.
(Unrelated side note: who likes Nixon? Poor example earlier on in the article.)
We have only had a federal Department of Education since 1979. You can trace the "how many school board members, ad.inistrators, and teachers ..." directly back its creation.
I’ve suggested eliminating most of the Cabinet level departments and go 50 mph in reverse and return to just having State, Treasury, Justice and....the War Department
Indeed. Wicker v. Filburn should be overturned for the same reason Roe v. Wade was: it was a decision cut out of whole cloth with no basis in the Constitution to have the desired policy outcome (and keep FDR from packing the court).
I recently came across “Grassroots Army”. Some great YouTube videos of parents speaking out against school boards, etc. Check it out if you haven’t already.
When parents began to refuse to parent, the school boards and personnel rushed to fill the void...the camel was invited into the tent! Not saying it belongs there, but explaining why it is there.
An example often seen in the media, a child is bullied online and the school is blamed. A child being harassed online is absolutely wrong. Why aren't parents responsible for setting the limits for access to phones and the internet? Allowing 24/7 access, especially in elementary school, gives multiple bullies and some incredibly vile people the ability to virtually enter a child's bedroom and wake them with an electronic nightmare. Why are parents allowing their child to be a cyber bull stalking classmates at 2 in the morning? Why do parents buy their 8 year old child an MA game allow them to go on line and play without limits and then complain about the results to the school? Making the school aware may be part of the solution, but the resolution requires that the parent engage and take control of the situation.
The abdication of the role of parent created a vacuum and look whose and what ideologies rushed in to correct it. My judgement is that the camel needs to get out of the tent instead of being coaxed to stay.
I agree that there are parents who do not meet my standards but I am loathe to substitute my judgement for theirs. And there are many, many, many parents who are really, really good parents. None are perfect however and neither end of the spectrum justify the erosion of parental rights imposed by the current class of so-called educators. IMO the "it takes a village" mentality created what you are complaining about - far too many parents abandoned their role and turned it over to "the village". Idiot. Din't get me wrong, the support of the village is nice but the primary role is the parents.
At the very least, there have been parents who have supplied the fertilizer if not the seed for school personnel and boards to overreach...the overreach did not magically appear. Each parent is in a unique position to understand the needs of their child and address them, but when parents ask an institution to be a nanny state then the educational institute will step up and be that nanny state with its one size fits all rules. Hopefully, understanding and acknowledging what has contributed to the cause of the problem will put the parents in the parental role and the teachers back in the teaching role.
JoAnne there are many parents who are full blown addicts. That does not justify the overreach in education. The people who will let the web mind their kids will let the school take control too. That does not justify the overreach. It us a power grab pure and simple. The blame lies with those committing the overreach.
Well said! It’s funny in my town people refer to Moms for Liberty as this evil group. So one day I start researching them and realize, Wow!, I guess I’m evil too because I agree with some of their views! So because I say this I am put in a “column” as non-progressive and yet I hold moderate and progressive views also (Hmm, what should I be called then? 😀). I really don’t like being put in a column!
I don’t like how schools are getting away from what their core mission is - math, science, history etc..... they are spending less time on what they are supposed to be doing. As a parent I am responsible for raising my kids and dealing with teaching them how to think critically, eat healthfully, have a healthy relationship, treat people with respect, etc.... NOT THE SCHOOLS!
I liked Nixon and I voted for him when I was in college. IMHO he had a lot of strengths, some weaknesses (paranoia, primarily), and made some serious mistakes. In my opinion, the creation of the EPA and taking the nation off the gold standard, effectively ending the Bretton Woods agreement, make Watergate look like a Sunday stroll.
Since that time, the tyranny of those using "environmentalism" has been unrelenting, and compared to the damage done by inflation since taking the collar off the Big Spenders in Congress and all subsequent administrations, that too is trivial. The last I heard of the dollar's value was that it was somewhat less than 5 cents compared to its value in 1971, when Nixon ended the gold standard.
Nixon abused his power, but not as much as did Lyndon Johnson or John Kennedy, and certainly not as much as Joe Biden. But Nixon was a Republican, while the media and Congress were Democrats. Most historians also are Democrats, so Nixon's reputation is settled.
I'm not sure I agree that he was great. But he was certainly not the evil man the press caricatured him as. And I think, like Trump, he went a little "off" as a result of the unremitting smears and lies of the leftists and their media stooges.
I haven't called myself a Republican for over 20 years (Bush's lies cured me of that nonsense), but no one I ever knew applauded Andrew Jackson (the slave-holding founder of the so-called Democratic Party), Joe McCarthy (a man who used fear and demagoguery to maintain power) or Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon.
The real progressive myth is believing that Scandinavian countries are socialist and that "progressives" will magically never run out of other people's money. Also, the idea that Democrats are liberal is a sad joke because the Left is incredibly illiberal.
Hear! Hear! I want the word "liberal" back for those of us who still believe in free speech, freedom of religions, freedom of conscience and free markets. In Australia, it still has that significance so that the center-right party is the Liberal Party.
Yup. I am sick to death of American conservatives blathering on about "liberals this..." and "liberals that..." thus showing that they have no understanding of liberalism or liberal democracy.
I'm not sure that going along with the linguistic convention in America where the word "liberal" was stolen necessarily shows a lack of understanding of either liberalism or liberal democracy. After all, in America conservatism is about conserving, among other things, the American Founding, which is arguably the most quintessentially liberal (in the proper meaning) event in the history of the world. The word having been stolen by socialists (which of them said, that by calling socialism "liberalism" Americans could be made to accept it?), actual liberals who call themselves conservatives (because in the American context they are) complaining about self-described "liberals" advocating harmful policies is simply part of the landscape of American political language.
One thing is for certain - we are engaged in an existential (the real use of the term not that used by idiots) struggle between the forces of liberty and totalitarianism. Sadly, the progressives are on the side of the latter, the forces of totalitarian darkness. Leading us to a dystopian, 1984-like future. One one side are arrayed the forces of individual freedom and liberty. The forces of small government, no surveillance of citizens. respect for religious freedom and the family. In other words, the forces of light. On the other - the totalitarians, who spy on citizens, brook no dissent, arrange for social credit scores and enforce a brutal, secular dogma of lunacy. Who despise truth and enforce propaganda ministries and suppression of speech and information. The forces of a cold and joyless darkness.
On which path will our country tread? It's up to you. Because if you won't stand against the forces of darkness, the America we know and love will be over. The march of history is determined by the direction chosen by individuals. The path offered by progressives is poison. Reject it.
Perfectly put. It was Reagan who warned we are only one generation away from losing our freedoms. We are watching--in real time--as the so-called progressive, enlightened elites work 24 hours a day to limit them.
Yes, but. . .Atlas Shrugged is a thought experiment, and as such, John Galt's libertarian utopia may not work the same way in practice as it does in theory. Shallow thinking progressives think that they can build some communist utopia out of the air, and that it will bear no resemblance to Ingsoc or the USSR. That's why they always end up being the apparatchiks and useful idiots who prop up the regime. They aren't as smart as they think they are. Libertarians need to do better, and part of how we do that is through realism--adopting only those aspects that will work in practice.
Atlas Shrugged didn't suggest any solution. There was no happy ending. Only an epitaph. The world collapsed for lack of the few who remained who weren't corrupted.
I don’t know that I agree that there’s not a “right side” of history but I definitely agree that it’s not always the progressive side. I maintain that history is proving me right in that schools should have reopened fully in fall 2020. Ron DeSantis seems to be have been on the right side of history with covid. IMO.
Don't forget the foolish Fukuyama who brayed that history ended with the fall of the USSR and that liberal democracy would be the dominant world order.
Great article. This whole right side of history argument sounds good at a superficial level but looks to remove any nuance from situations and categorise everything as good or bad. It’s also ridiculous to look back (as people are currently doing to “cancel” historical figures) without considering the context at the time and trying to apply todays standards retrospectively.
All this mindless tribalism is exactly how awful decisions are made and manage to avoid scrutiny.
Isn't it ridiculous that destroying the reputations of the living isn't enough for the sanctimonious hypocrites. They must degrade the dead's reputations, too.
I made this comment on another thefp this morning:
Right, haven't you heard that Joan of Arc and Queen Elizabeth I were both "trans"? I'm thinking it might have been more like 6-7 years ago now that my daughter's friend was giving her one of these lectures. She liked to sound smart and fancied herself a leader. I thought it was mostly silly childish nonsense but tried to inject some reason by saying that when I was a very young woman I could remember sometimes catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror and being struck by how delicate my face and form looked in contrast to how strong and large I felt in spirit. The girl told me this meant I "was trans"! Wow, such an exciting discovery. Everything in this cosmology points to a person "being trans" but this is meaningless and religious. The whole thing has jumped far from the idea that a very small group of mostly men have a psychological disorder or dysphoria which might be "dealt with medically" as a last resort.
I had no idea back then this thing was so viral. It's been in the universities for some time and has jumped out into everything. So many take advantage of it for politics, making money off surgeries and hanging plaques as "gender therapists" (you could be one, it's easy - just tell everyone who comes in that anything they say or complain about means they "are trans" and that changing their identities and taking harmful hormones will fix everything). People are making $$$ off this in pharma, as a DEI/DIE grifters at a schools or businesses. Many become self important "leaders" or allies (a dirty word to me now) in these school Alliance groups. Tech, media, and government are all on the wagon. Most "conservatives" or "Republicans" chose not to disagree as they will be labeled haters as "El Monstro" told me I am down below somewhere. But, when did we decide that "support" meant to agree with delusion?
Apparently - according to reports - so were Joan of Arc and Queen Elizabeth I - also, any high school or college girl who feels strong inside or wants to feel powerful about herself.
The supreme irony is that without the historical figures that the Woke want to Cancel (like Jefferson and Washington), they would not have the freedom to do their Cancelling.
The younger kids I speak with don’t know who attacked on 9/11 much less why. And if I tell them they immediately get defensive explaining, quite condescendingly, that Islam is peace. So it isn’t just not knowing, or is what else was shoved into their heads.
Yes. Islam means submission. Of course in Semitic languages the consonants are the root of the word, so Islam (submission) and Salam (peace) have the same root. When a non-Muslim tells you that Islam is "a religion of peace" he or she is deluded. But curiously, when a Muslim makes the same statement, it is not a lie, rather it betrays the defective Islamic concept of peace, in which the only peace is that of submission, the peace between conqueror and conquered.
It is what happens when you are godless and don't believe there is a heaven or hell. I thought the writer acknowledged beautifully that "Progressivism" is a replacement for religious faith, i.e. a cult.
First-Never start anything with Bernie Sanders a grifter, communist, and power hungry, angry old lizard.
Second-Progressives have been vocal for starting conflict and then abandoning people’s to rubble, death, and destruction. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. Don’t tell me about Bush. A Rhino world order guy, friends with Clinton and Obama. When convenient they will abandon Ukraine. Hell they can’t even protect America.
Progressives see themselves as saviors but in reality all they are is a Locust swarm that destroys and leaves ruins in their path.
Forget history for a bit. How about just doing what’s right for the American people and our countries stability? People just want decent education, law and order, a job to support their families or themselves. Put the shit head progressive’s all on an island and they will starve to death. They wouldn’t be able to agree what needs to be done.
Reagan slammed us backwards at 50 mph? Lordy, we could use another shift into reverse. Our border is a shambles, crime rampant, record ODs, debt progessing alarmingly fast, our education system failing our kids or worse, etc
Isn’t it fascinating that Ukraine’s border is inviolable but ours doesn’t exist?
Or nationalism is good for Ukrainians and apparently bad for the Brits and us...
Totally wrong question to ask, and very intentionally slanted. Bad as it is, I’ve haven’t seen the MSM lauding Ukrainian “nationalism”. I come from a country next to Ukraine and I have a very dim view of Ukrainian nationalism. I do however fully understand that when one country is savagely attacked, it should defend itself and should be praised for doing so, just like the Brits or Americans would do if their countries would be invaded - that’s not nationalism. But my country has often been invaded by Russia, whereas Americans have exactly zero experience of being invaded by a much more powerful neighbor - hence the “right” for Americans to say silly things about things that they have no clue about.
Forgive me for pointing out that more than 2 million people crossed the US southern border in 2022.
Any army commander from anywhere in the world would be ecstatic to have pulled such an invasion off with so few casualties.
Are you trying to say that having a lot of illegal immigrants crossing the border in search of work, because the politicians of this country can’t agree on adequate measures, is equivalent to having your country reduced to rubble and your children murdered by missiles and cold? If so, you’re just making my point about clueless Americans blabbing about things they have no clue about.
Well spoken.
Andy, that was my point later in this thread about abstractions. What is "nationalism" exactly? Should we all agree on a definition? Or is it something that we endless discuss what is in the definition and what isn't? Too many words are wasted that way IMHO. Socialism, progressivism, environmentalism, and so on. If we skip the ism, and go to "does the Ukraine have the right to defend itself?" we would have a different discussion and possibly agree more.
re: NS Lyons, "reality wars" ("virtuals vs physicals")
Nationalism is the opposite of globalism. Nationalism tends to be associated with populism and traditional values and with industrial capitalism.
The ("woke") left is now aligned culturally with digital capitalism, and has abandoned old-school leftist class struggle (opposition to industrial capitalism and finance).
The ("woke") "left" usually sees "nationalism" as representing opposition to global economics and the attitudes of the media-tech elites and the PMC (Ehrenreich, professional-managerial class). The PMC are the media puppets promoting "leftist" notions of globalism and the economic exploitation of the lower middle and working classes.
The word Progressive as use by the Dems is an oxymoron. The stifling of free speech by the PC and the work is not progressive. The defeat of a merit based system is not progressive. The burning of cities and defunding police is not progressive. Let's call the Dems what they really are, not progressive. They are tyrants, pure and simple.
Ukraine has a right to defend itself. It doesn't have a right to my money to fight a US proxy war; or my money to pursue the policies of a demented US president and his authoritarian quasi-dictatorship.
Oh, I don't know ... we knew enough to sacrifice our children's lives to save yours.
Whose lives were saved by “sacrificing our children”?
If you have to ask the question, the answer doesn't matter.
Again...
1776, 1812. In the first instance too many Britons thought Britain in the wrong to prosecute the war properly. In the second we had the minor distraction of an existential threat just off-shore. In both instances if we had put our minds to it the USA would have been a footnote in history.
re: USA a footnote: Now tell the one again about the grapes probably being sour, anyway.
Things are looking like Britain will soon be the footnote. Funny how things go....
Ukraine should definitely defend itself if it likes. But the US taxpayers are paying for said defense. Certainly makes Ukraine's job easier. Doable, even.
Or we can simplify things, Sharon, and applaud nationalism when it is employed to defend a country (Britain vs Hitler) - and despise it when it is used to attack a neighbor, unprovoked (Putin vs Ukraine).
There is nothing wrong with pride for and in one's place of residence. It's part of the human condition.
It is when nationalism is used as an excuse to suppress or oppress that it becomes problematic.
Hitler was a nationalist.
And? So was Gandhi. Nationalism per se obviously isn't the problem.
The "problem" is imperialism/colonialism.
The British Empire blundered by imposing harsh terms on the Germans after the German's loss in WW1.
By the 1930s, both classical liberalism and socialism were discredited, and the resulting vacuum was filled by fascism, which was a revolutionary blend of populism and nationalism.
Fascism was incoherent because it held to two contradictory notions:
(1) a tribalistic and magical conception of a nation and the triumphant, mystical "will of the people", and
(2) the idea that the tribe-nation had been oppressed and spiritually polluted by other corrupt tribes.
Actual tribes were always afraid of being overrun and enslaved by empires, going back 5,000 years.
Of course he was since he used it to justify aggression. As Putin does today.
Hitler's rise to power was a nationalist restoration of what had been lost in WW1.
Zelensky openly promotes a quasi-nationalist and zionist(!) form of nationalism, which is deferential to NATO internationalism.
That is a complete clusertf*ck inside a shitst0rm, basically turning Ukraine into a giant colonialist outpost for "western aggression" on the fault line of the clash of civilizations.
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/09/17/zelensky-nato-ukraine-big-israel/
I think if Mexico invaded we would respond. The problem is that these migrants don’t have uniforms on.
Perhaps it would be easier for us if they did.
You think that if Mexico invaded we would respond. Are you sure? And what would that response be?
That those are fair questions says a lot.
That hasn't stopped you before; I don't recall the Lakota or Iroquois being in uniform when you were murdering them; nor umpteen others from S. E. Asians down to Afghanis and Syrians. I don't think there is a Western nation that you can name that doesn't have a long catalogue of folk they murdered who weren't in uniform.
I think you might have missed my sarcasm, Steven. (which could have been my fault..)
I was responding to the following previous comment, which helps put mine in perspective:
'Isn’t it fascinating that Ukraine’s border is inviolable but ours doesn’t exist?'
So what Marie is saying is that since Ukraine is defending its border against Russia, why aren't we defending ours? In other words she's treating the flood of migrants from south of the border as invaders - of which I disagree.
Hence my comment.
I almost laughed. The I remembered it is true.
So are Poland's, Syria's, and Egypt's since we are giving them $$$ to enforce them.
The USA has been an empire since about 1899* (Spanish-American War: Cuba, Philippines)
By the end of WW2 the USA became the functional equivalent of the British Empire II
The modern nation state system as originated in the Treaty of Westphalia (1600s) has been bent and warped almost completely out of recognition as a tool of empire-on-empire crime.
* https://mises.org/library/conquest-united-states-spain
-----
responding to:
https://www.thefp.com/p/there-is-no-right-side-of-history/comment/11563649
The Treaty or Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War in 1648. The European nation states decided to stop killing each other and turn their attention on bringing "civilization" to the unwashed masses of Africa, Asia and the Americas.
The last major Muslim/Ottoman/Mongolian invasion of central Europe (late 1600s) which was an attempt to bring Islamic civilization to the unwashed masses of Europe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Turkish_War
Yep. The standard narrative is that it resulted in the concept of the modern nation state, with fixed boundaries (see Martin Van Creveld).
The Mexican Drug Cartels (D) and their NGO subsidiaries have killed 10x as many people in the US as Putin has killed in Ukraine.
Isn't it fascinating that the only thing that you do is post troll scriptz?
Actually that's not true. I just read and comment. Perhaps you are the troll?
I regularly counter-troll the troll-bots.
Their narratives are obviously copy/pasted from various troll farms from soros on the "left" to something equivalent on the "right".
it is all low IQ and ridiculously boring.
I was responding to "Marie", who is obviously a tr0ll-b0t.
https://www.thefp.com/p/there-is-no-right-side-of-history/comment/11559849
Sorry, your response came through as though it was directed at me.
But you see, all that is because the progressives haven’t succeeded in “progressing” us enough yet. We haven’t reached the point yet where we own nothing and are happy.
Sanctimonious progressives can declare “ours is a time of inflection” but I’d say it’s more a time of infection, akin to a fungus that never quite goes away. The kind that inhabits dark, dank, recesses that most life forms choose to avoid.
For years big tech, the security apparatus of “our” government and their MSM lackeys have kept us in the dark place that Orwell warned us of. A place of suppression, lawlessness and outright lies,
But just as with a fungus, the best means of suppressing Orwell’s nightmare is light. For now at least, Elon, Bari, Matt and others are shining a light. It’s up to the rest of us to make sure it shines bright.
Just watched Dr. Malone's interview on Epoch TV. He exposes it all. Worth a look.
It was excellent Bruce, terrific man!
Excellent but scary as hell, not least because Dr. Malone knows of what he speaks.
I still think his description of our Covid response as a "mass formation psychosis" was the best description of our nation's loss of its collective mind and self-respect in response to a virus that was really deadly only to the very aged or infirm.
Yes, Dr. Malone was completely right about the pandemic being a case study in mass formation psychosis.
All other concerns took a back seat to maniacal avoidance of infections and obsessive "mitigation measures," and society was ruled by a totalitarian regime based on the calculus of only the most risk-averse individuals.
Whole swathes of the country committed to absurdities even when obviously false. The validity of the absurdities wasn't the point; what mattered was that people believed in the absurdities together. In much the same way, folks bought into The Narrative™ not because it was true, but because it cemented a social bond they desperately needed.
All four pre-conditions needed for mass formation psychosis were also present.
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/covid-as-mass-formation-psychosis
Exactly Bruce, a giant experiment in submission training.
Those in society who are happy to trade a little freedom for safety and security have been spooked into believing they are at risk of imminent death, so mask up forever. And they bend their knees. Primed for the next fake scare.
Also watch Bret Weinstein/Dark Horse podcast interview of a British MD who says the evidence of dangers of mRNA “vaccine” outweight the risks, and they should be withdrawn.
At the beginning, little was known, and we had (and still have) a moral obligation to protect the aged and infirm, the oldest of whom fought wars that MEANT something to our collective freedom (before our "wars"--Vietnam, Iraq, etc.-- basically became attacking tiny countries to keep the military industrial complex running).
The attitude of "well, they're just old and infirm so let's not bother with any precautions to keep them safe" is disturbing, to say the least.
However, once it was determined that the vaccines don't prevent the spread of the virus but DO prevent serious illness and, often, hospitalization the moral requirement was met and we should have returned to normal.
COVID is now being used like a political football. For example, the Supreme Court says people can meet in churches despite COVID but can't apply for asylum in the U.S. because of COVID
As we eat bugs.
My God, but they are loathsome cretins.
Which, the progressives or the bugs? :)
Some would say it’s a distinction without a difference. Kinda like cock roaches that scurry away when exposed to light
The bugs can't help themselves.
I don't think the Progs can either. They just keep doubling and trying down.
Yip they trying f..king hard to destroy us!
Nah. Just "progressing" to being a decent person is enough.
I love owning things.
Are you not "decent", you are a vile, despicable liar. You probably are not even a "person", rather you are a b0t/tr0ll account set up to post troll scriptz.
What a coincidence! I feel the same exact way about you.
It's at these moments I'm reminded about the great political ideology embraced by Trump supporters like you.
I believe it was "F-ck Your Feeelings."
You can't escape you brainwashed ignorance.
B0T
YOU ARE A MEMETIC REPLICATION B0T that can't overcome your programming/brainwashing and can't escape your echo chamber.
From another discussion:
TOXIC Leftist/ "woke" cancel culture / Cultural Marxist, PC left, CRT/SJW/BLM rhetoric*, explained:
00000. memory holing
0000. SMUG ARROGANCE
000. use absurd SMEARS
00. project
0. gaslight
......
1. Deflect from what was actually said/done (move goal posts)
2. Distort or lie about facts and evidence (such as straw manning)
3. Cherry pick evidence to fit the (victim/diversity) narrative / shift goal posts
4. Engage in emotive, feel good bs (special pleading) rather than use rational, objective thought
5. Use guilt by association ("you are a K-K-K/n-a-z-i") to smear people that dare to criticize PC/SJW leftist ideology.
[->] Use groupthink and scapegoating to marginalize critics of the PC left.
6. Demonize the personalities of opponents/critics.
7. Destroy the reputation, character and career of critics of the PC left
8. Use psychological violence, which could include doxxing, and threats of actual violence, against critics of the PC left.
-----
*Note: the above can be generalized to fit any ideology.
examples:
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/i-criticized-blm-then-i-was-fired
Thank you AGAIN, for proving my point:
You are a psychotic and irrational and delusional TROLL that can't do anything but PROJECT your psychosis.
B0T
Aww....what's the matter? You can hurl your venom and bile, but can't take it when it's given back? Gonna go cry to the admins again, little baby?
What you love is posting meaningless troll scripts, in response to other meaningless troll scripts.
The comments section of this substack are a toilet full of troll excrement.
This is a common “progressive” mantra - that all of their ideas constitute improvement and all conservative ideas represent regression. The opposite is true in most cases, certainly with respect to the issues you mentioned.
Or, 'man is perfectible' which of course is the opposite.
Not perfectible-but like all animal species that survive-evolving.
The OP/article is correct that most flavors of "leftism" and "progressivism" are just badly rehashed versions of Christianity.*
"Progressivism" is a rehashed version of 1880s style Victorian moral panics and "missionary imperialism". The first major "progressive" politicians in the USA, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were psychotic warmongers following "missionary" Victorian moral panics (in Wilson's case: Prohibition).
As such, there is no "progress" involved, just the recycling of ancient mythic archetypes in a failed attempt to adapt to modern (rationalist) and postmodern (relativistic-pluralistic) social conditions.
* https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/
In Roosevelt's imperialism.
incoherent (/typo?)
Actual cultural evolution, beyond postmodernist ideas/values, will adapt to disruption and the "crisis of meaning"
https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history
It might be interesting for you to know that north of us in Canada that until recently one of their three major political parties was called the Progressive Conservatives.
I personally think Bush (the second) got his ‘compassionate conservative’ slogan from older ideas from above the 45th parallel.
Conservative thinking can indeed be progressive, just like progressive thinking can encompass conservative values.
Nothing is absolute.
Nuance also seems to be on whatever side of history we are not these days.
Love the moniker.
Progressives forget the malaise that existed during the Carter presidency, the humiliation of our government in Tehran and elsewhere, the stagflation of the late 1970's etc. I'm with you, I'd take that shift into reverse any day.
I came to point similarly to the economic and social destruction that years of progressive policy (beginning in the 60s) created in the 70s and early 80s. There were certainly some policies implemented in the 80s that have proven disastrous, like the War on Drugs. But those were created after years of spiking crime that was the result of decades of liberal soft on crime policy.
About to explode Niko if progressives don’t get us now the drugs coming into America probably will.
The collapse of industrial capitalism and the rise of suburban consumerism and globalism is what caused most of those problems.
You seem to be extremely poorly informed and grossly confused by "right wing" propaganda.
Restrictive gun control measures implemented in California under Reagan in the 70s is a stark example of such.
Hell, they "forget" what life was like in this country just 3 years ago. They apparently got "tired of all the winning," as jokingly predicted.
I assumed that was why he skipped silently over Eisenhower but stopped at LBJ.
Carter inherited inflation / stagflation from Nixon and Ford and appointed Paul Volker to head the Fed and began raising interest rates to lower inflation in 1977 (sound familiar). It took a couple of years but it succeeded. Hard to blame Carter for hostages being taken from an embassy (he was eventually able to get them released). When 241 marines were killed in their barracks in Beirut Regan cut and ran. Not saying that was wrong but interpretation goes along with what tribe you adhere to as the author suggests.
yep, and Nixon and Ford inherited the failed Vietnam war economy of JFK and LBJ.
True though I would argue it was LBJ.
The Vietnam war's origins begin just after the end of WW2.
The French manipulated Truman into supporting their attempt at regaining control over Vietnam with a small, corrupt faction of Vietnamese Catholics (puppet leaders) in a majority Buddhist country. Very dumb.
Eisenhower and JFK continued that kind of dumb stuff, but it didn't seriously escalate until JFK was President. LBJ/Kissinger of course continued and expanded the escalation significantly, for very stupid reasons.
Historical documentation indicates that McNamara lied to LBJ about the possibility of "winning" the war.
My father was a combat veteran, USAF fighter pilot and B52 commander that saw up close the gross intelligence and political failures of the Vietnam War.
And conservatives apparently forget that Reagan was actually corrupt and illegally engaged in arms shipments that Congress had banned (Iran-Contra scandal).
Yup.....I stopped believing this guy at that phrase as well. I don't recommend going in reverse at 50 mph......but we need a complete but slow reversal on many things. He likes Bernie Sanders economics. WTF!!!!!! He hates big entities....like Corporations......unless it is owned and/or controlled by his favorite entity...........Big Government.
Liberals don't believe in liberty....we need to stop calling them that.
I believe we need to be cautious with labels such as liberal, progressive, centrist, conservative, and "far right extremists."
Each label can be used to praise, to demean, or to refer to reality among certain subsets of our society.
During my nearly eight decades of living, I've watched from afar how propagandists can baffle us with linguistic bull shit to denigrate a class of people, often a group with whom the puppet masters want to start a war.
I agree. The labels have also become a way of forcing folks to pick teams. Once you pick, you’re expected to go with the team on everything and are often bashed if you fail to do so.
A good point that I had not considered, Almost Home.
Thank you for your comment.
Unless those "labels" are defined coherently, they are mostly meaningless, and as you say, are used to stir up hostility (via propaganda).
A lot of the political division in the USA is left over from the Civil War.
Human population genetics and ethnic origins have a significant effect on regional politics and culture:
https://medium.com/s/balkanized-america/the-11-nations-of-america-as-told-by-dna-f283d4c58483
This is very interesting. I’d never heard of the studies. Thanks for sharing.
Expansion of euthanasia laws in Canada and some European countries-to voluntarily include the crippled and depressed-including teens-as reported- tell's the tale.
" I'll do whatever I can get away with-you can't stop me-big monkey-little monkey- rich monkey-poor monkey -I'm a tyrant for your own good- Little Red Book dunce cap ideologues -we're putting you to sleep anyway- lets not let those vital organs go to waste- you're so brave-do it for your country- sign here- so another (the rich and well connected) can live- besides it's the law."
We're dealing with the criminally insane. And, the criminally insane have compromised American elected political leadership. Compromised not captured. At this moment we're inhabiting bodies ("...born in the middle-die in the middle...") in the eternal present. I suspect that most here will attest to the fact that this is a short ride. The American Constitution and the Bill of Rights it contains is all that matters.
Progressivism always had some very bizarre features, but it has further mutated into something that itself has many "regressive" features, from a social science perspective.
As the author points out, the "woke" faux religion is a re-invention of Christianity, and not in a good way (it is ILLIBERAL, Orwellian, totalitarian and corrupt and it proposes of model of "evil" that is toxic and irrational).
The more general case of cultural regression is related to the "crisis of meaning" that results from social change driven by techno-economic and social disruption.
During periods of disruption of an existing social system (in this case a nation-state), humans tend to regress to tribalistic identification to deal with social disorder.
The OP/article is full of weird contradictions, but I seriously doubt that you can coherently, rationally and objectively support all of your assertions.
Hello e. Always good to hear from you.
How rational and objective can you be in dealing with the insane and irrational disintegration surrounding us? Bad social and economic policy wrought by a mercenary and compromised American elected political leadership in the employ of totalitarian financier's who use Marxist ideologues to subvert our national dialogue. It's the pathology of extreme narcissism and abandonment of the political objectivity, trust and stewardship American's deserve.
Euthanasia laws in Canada and in some European nations have been expanded to include the crippled and depressed. At least that's what's being reported. The use of ideology to consider hacking off the genitals of adolescents is bat shit crazy and a medical establishment willing to exploit the situation for cash is criminal. But, that's just me.
Glad you're still standing.
Thanks, hope you and yours have been well and have another yearly rotation on the planet around the nearest solar body that is meaningful and prosperous.
If all that bad stuff is an enemy to be defeated or marginalized to the extent possible, or to be optimistic, "transformed" into something that is not disintegrating. Meta-rationalism will be required to both understand the problem with precision, and to get people to research and "emotionally" invest in "something better"
That is a complex topic, and many references are possible. One of the most important aspects is that current systems are fragile to disruption, so the evolution of anti-fragile systems and ways of thinking/feeling is a big goal.
here in NYC Progressives have made great accomplishments - they actually managed to bring rampant crime back after the glorious and safe Bloomberg years
>>Or worse
Yup.
"Progressives" are Orwellians, and they delude no one more than themselves. This article is a cheap trick - a declaration that there is no "right side of history" followed by a series of calm assertions that historical figures who opposed "progressivism" were on the wrong side of history.
This is done unironically, partly because the author is stupid and partly because the author assumes that his audience is stupid.
Bari Weiss et al host this tripe partly because they share the author's worldview and partly because they believe that we must have intelligent dialogue between people of different views, and that idealism blinds them to the fact that there are ideologies in this world that fundamentally preclude the concept of honest debate.
There are preconditions to civilization, and there are a growing number of people in our world who insist on rejecting those preconditions. The civilized way to deal with such people is to exclude them from society, not to try to "compromise" with them.
Great comment. 100 likes
If only Reagan had shifted into reverse. At most he was able to tap the brakes a little.
I think you are being mighty unfair to the writer. He’s not writing it for people who already disagree with him. He’s writing it to progressives. He’s encouraging debate. You aren’t going to convince progressives by showing how wrong they have been.
True, but it is still a garbled narrative.
The "progressives" that are capable of rational debate are a vanishing, nearly extinct species.
Most of the sane ones have already abandoned the faux religion of "wokeness" and are increasingly open to understanding that the ideology is incoherent on many other levels, such as promoting the marginalization of the working classes by the "woke" upper-middle classes and promoting globalist war mongering via an alliance with the military-industrial-complex.
The violence that most "progressives" have done to their own best ideas is catastrophic. They are puppets of evil politics and digital capitalism.
It is inevitable that any attempt to rescue "progressivism" will be incoherent and garbled while it still clings to the idea that "progressivism" was anything other than a passing and out-of-touch historical trend that needs to be replaced by something better.
You would be right, Greg - except for the inconvenient fact that Reagan (of all people) signed into law the largest amnesty for illegal immigrants in history. So large in fact that it has informed Republican altitudes towards illegals in this country ever since - as in, zero forgiveness.
I could go on, like how debt mushroomed under Reagan as he embraced supply side economics by lowering taxes but increased spending, but you get the point.
Reagan made America feel good about itself, after Carter did the opposite- and I guess that’s worthy of applause.
I didn't miss those. Debt was less than 40% of GDP back in the Reagan days; well over 100% now. which is worse? Amnesty was an attempt to fix a problem wheras now the administration just denies we have a problem. which is worse? Correct Reagan made us feel good about ourselves and about being American. Biden calls half the country ultra super duper MAGA WAGAs or some such demented phrase and says all of them are threats to Democracy. Which is worse? Reagan played a big part in tearing down that wall and the dissolution of the USSR, Biden left folks behind in Afghanistan, watched as Russia started a war to rebuild the USSR, did zip while N Korea and Iran escalated nuclear programs. Which is worse? What i see is a country rushing towards a cliff, so yes I want to shift to reverse before we hurtle over the edge
Right on many counts - except you might want to spread the blame. Debt is way over100% of GDP since Reagan, but lets count the years - since 1988 we’ve had 16 yrs of GOP rule, 18 yrs under Dems. Both parties are guilty. And yes we have a horrible situation at the border. Biden has completely screwed it up, but then again there has been a problem down there for decades and no one has solved it. Trump had a Congress all to himself for two full years but he and the GOP were so hapless they couldn’t even put up a wall he campaigned on.
Iran and nukes - what would you like us to do? Bomb them? Give the job to the Israelis? The deal that Trump triumphantly ripped up was flawed, but now that he in his wisdom walked away from it, Iran is closer to nuclear weaponry than ever before.
Trump’s little love in with North Korea’s child king? He said he loved him. My. My.
When the act was!n’t consummated the little boy started firing missiles left right and center.
You say that Biden watched as Putin decided to become mean. After Trump’s vomit inducing performance on bended knee with Vladimir in Helsinki five years ago - I wonder what Trump would have done to stop Putin had he still been in power. Do you think he would have supported Ukraine and NATO? I don’t think so. Trump would have folded like a house of cards and perhaps have given Putin a wink and a nod before his tanks crossed the border.
Btw, you are right about Afghanistan. It was a ghastly pullout, poorly executed by Biden and based on a poor plan by, well, his predecessor.
re: Afghanistan pullout
Have you read the SIGAR reports, or summaries of them?
Afghanistan went south when Obama decided that it was a bad war, but he didn't have the spine to end it himself. Instead, years and years of more corruption and more dysfunction set in, leading to the inevitability of a bad outcome and pullout.
UNDER OBAMA, MOST OF THE MONEY THE USA POURED INTO AFGHANISTAN WAS USED TO BRIBE THE TABLIBAN, NOT ACTUALLY HELP THE PEASANTS.
Biden made very specifically stupid decisions about the pullout because he is an incompetent, senile blunderer that made a bad situation worse than it should have been.
Biden is a profoundly corrupt, senile puppet, like all corporate Democrats.
Clintons politically exploited the Bosnian War to move the Democratic party in the direction of war mongering, via a bizarre constant drumbeat of absurd hate rhetoric toward Russia.
At the same time, Clintons threw the industrial working classes under the bus by adopting Carter-Reagan's neoliberal economics.
If Trump had been re-elected in 2020, Putin would not have had any reason to invade Ukraine, because Trump was the foreign policy anti-dote to the psychotic war mongering of the corrupt neolib-neocon corporate democrats (Clintons, Obama, Biden).
The corrupt corporate Democrats are little more than puppets of the military-industrial-complex and the Deep State.
Trump was on his way to dismantling NATO with his demands for more European funding if his foreign policy team didn't stop him, mercifully. Watching Trump interact with Putin in Helsinki or Putin's cronies in the White House, one wonders just how compliant he would have been to Putin if in 2021 he had been in power.
Putin could easily have surmised that Donald wouldn't have too much to say about an incursion into Ukraine, and certainly would not send weapons Zelensky's way. So Putin would have walked right in confident that no one would stand in his way, Europe being rudderless without American leadership.
I admit Hillary has a tendency towards bellicosity, but then again so did Dick Cheney via Iraq, Afghanistan (never mind Kuwait). Neo cons come in many flavours.
You have now escaped reality and are fully with the delusional, hallucinatory echo chamber of "leftism".
I was around for that. He did that in return for a promise from Democrats to reform immigration. A promise they promptly reneged on. And while I cannot speak on behalf of anyone else it has indeed informed my opinions regarding illegal immigration (by which I mean those who come first and ask later). It also informed my opinion of Democrats. So if you want to blame Reagan do so, he was snookered, but in my estimation that means the Democrats and Democrats alone are responsible for the current failure. The Reagan Amnesty was what, 11,000,000? That have lived here securely and reproduced freely, many have brought extended family members and send vast sums of American dollars back to their country of origin. It is insane.
But Reagan in my mind never regretted signing the bill. Because at that point it had nothing to do with ideology. He, to his credit, pragmatically understood that he had to accept the reality that was on the ground at that point in time.
In terms of failure - I only take issue with your assertion that only one party is at fault. Bush had eight years to affect change. Nothing. Trump had a compliant Congress for two years and got nothing! Not even his egregious wall (which might have been effective, albeit bluntly).
Suffice to say that both sides of the aisle own this one, imo.
I don't take issue with Reagan for signing it. I take issue with the Democrats for reneging on their promise to reform immigration. I assume your reference to Bush was to the latter Bush as you specified 8 years. It is true he had a Republican Congress for 4 of the eight but he also was contending with 9/11 issues shortly after he took office. Trump did not have a supportive Congress for his first two years despite the fact that it was Republican. But the Democrats did nothing under Clinton, Obama, nor Biden when their party controlled Congress and presumably their President would have signed any bill they passed.
I do agree both parties seem content to do nothing. Probably because they see no way to line their pickets/coffers. Pardon my cynicism.
IF you actually look at what Barbara Jordan said on behalf of Clintons in the mid to late 1990s about immigration (C-span archives), the Jordan-Clinton border policies were what would [now] be considered "far right".
Jordan-Clinton policies STARTED THE BORDER BARRIER CONSTRUCTION near San Diego, supposedly stopping millions of illegal immigrants.
Ross Perot, "giant sucking sound", 1992:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3LvZAZ-HV4
I didn't assert anything like that. Both major parties/ideologies are pure dysfunction, pure corruption and pure hypocrisy on illegal immigration and a number of other major issues.
My guess is that even if the wall was built (necessary, but not sufficient), a military occupation of a 100-200 mile wide buffer zone in Mexico all along the border would be necessary to come close to stopping illegal immigration and smuggling. Most of the current population of illegal immigrants should be given a choice: prison camps, temporary deportation to the border buffer and a 5-10 [year] period of security service there in exchange for gaining legal residency, or permanent deportation back to country of origins, or similar.
A long-term solution would also require an international effort at fixing the broken politics and economies of source countries, to the extent possible.*
Most people are too ill-informed to understand how practical solutions are needed, no matter how much they might "offend" their brainwashed attitudes.
-----
* digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/28362/1/BolivarPen.pdf
...
Vd. sabe que yo he mandado veinte años y de ellos no he sacado más que pocos resultados ciertos:
[] 1º) La [latin] América es ingobernable para nosotros.
[] 2º) El que sirve una revolución ara en el mar.
[] 3º) La única cosa que se puede hacer en [latin] América es emigrar.
[--->] 4º) Este país caerá infaliblemente en manos de la multitud desenfrenada, para después pasar a tiranuelos casi imperceptibles, de to dos colores y razas.
[] 5º) devorados por todos los crímenes y extinguidos por la ferocidad, los europeos no se dignarán conquistarnos.
[] 6º) Si fuera posible que una parte del mundo volviera al caos primitivo, éste sería el último periodo de la [latin] América...
With all due respect e. pierce, I was responding to Lynne. Not to you.
post gibberish in a public forum, deal with the consequences
re: revolution and regression to political tribalism
translation:
Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sim%C3%B3n_Bol%C3%ADvar#Letter_near_the_end_of_his_life_(November_9,_1830)
Letter near the end of his life (November 9, 1830)
As you know, I have led for twenty years and have obtained only a few certain results:
[latin] America is ungovernable.
He who serves a revolution plows the sea.
The only thing one can do in [latin] America is emigrate.
This country will fall unfailingly into the hands of the unbridled crowd and then pass almost imperceptibly to tyrants of all colors and races.
Devoured by all crimes and extinguished by ferocity, the Europeans will not deign to conquer us.
If it were possible for one part of the world to return to primitive chaos, this would be the last period of [latin] America.
Gutiérrez Escudero, Antonio, ed. (2005),
"6. Carta al general Juan José Flores, jefe del estado de Ecuador (Barranquilla, 9 de noviembre de 1830)
[Letter to General Juan José Flores, head of state of Ecuador, Barranquilla, November 9, 1830"]
(in Spanish), Simón Bolívar: aproximación al pensamiento del Libertador (approximations to the thoughts of the liberator), Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos (CSIC), Sevilla, p. 12, retrieved on 2017-11-06
Reagan was dumb. Right wingers are hypocrites for supporting him.
Reagan and other "corporate" Republicans loved (and still do love) illegal immigrants because they can be exploited for low-wage labor to increase profits.
Iran-Contra scandal. Ollie North.
Reagan-style neolib/neocon politics were adopted by Clintons, Obama, and Biden to economically destroy the working classes and engage in psychotic war mongering.
And you’re not mentioning Bush 1 and Bush 2?
Yes, you didn't mention Bush 1 and Bush 2.
Perhaps because I was originally responding to Greg (remember him at the top of the thread?) who said nothing about them…
blaming one of the two factions of the corporate-state uniparty for their dumb shared policies is dumb, unless considerable precision is used to differentiate between them.
the corporate "right" wants cheap illegal labor to exploit to increase profits.
the corporate "left" wants to pander to their brain-dead "woke" ideology to get votes.
fyi:
When I click on a substack email notification, I just see the response in my web browser.
In the web browser, clicking "Return to thead" usually doesn't take me to the previous comments, except the first comment in the thread.
(this is the link to your comment that I'm responding to: https://www.thefp.com/p/there-is-no-right-side-of-history/comment/11572580 )
I don't usually reply in the Substack app on my Apple mini-Pad, but do every once in a while.
This is the link to Greg's comment, he only mentioned Reagan, neither Bush, and not Clintons, Obama or Biden, all of whom were puppets and assholes.
https://www.thefp.com/p/there-is-no-right-side-of-history/comment/11559586
Richard Nixon gets all the blame for starting the War on Drugs, but it was Ronald Reagan who escalated it to the point where it entrenched the criminal illegal drugs monopoly as a cornerstone institution in the political economy and popular culture of the US.
Reagan- whose attitudes and policy approach were comfortably in line with the near consensus of his generational age demographic, in support of Zero Tolerance drug criminalization- was well-intentioned, but disastrously misguided. The Drug War policies that were initially escalated by the Reagan administration have done massive, catastrophic harm to this country.
As for the long-term results of Reagan's economic policies-
https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Rich-Poor-Electorate-Aftermath/dp/006097396X
http://www.barlettandsteele.com/books/am_wwr.php
Proud to be a progressive? Think we need more? Reflect on this history--Woodrow Winston was the progressive who ushered in the great administrative state, better known now as the swamp of people who run Washington and our lives and who can’t be fired. We now have a DOJ directing its attention against American parents, calling them domestic terrorists, and we have people imprisoned since Jan 2020 who haven’t been given a trial. Then we have FDR and LBJ who initiated, and then expanded, the great welfare state. Now we have millions of people who pay no taxes, don’t work, and suck off the taxpayers who do. We have reached a point now where not working is a “right”. We print money to fund this and are trillions of dollars in debt. Progressives have destroyed academia and K-12 education with woke crap and are sexualizing little children. They have taken over media and social media and control what we can know and feed us lies. They are policing us in shocking ways that would make McCarthy smile, so much so that people are invoking “1984”. Is this the direction of history you yearn for? Is this what you call the “right side of history”?
The enlightened "progressive" will continue to believe those are all good things but will discover after twenty years that the phrase "right side of history" is not appropriate.
As if that wasn't obvious from the very first time they used it.
'Good things' mean different things to different ideologies. Theoretically, anything that hurts someone else is bad. But it's a sliding scale. Jefferson said as long as you don't break my bones, you can believe -- not necessarily do -- what you want. A generation seems to have lost the distinction. On the practical side real harm means that people who shoot, rob, and beat up other people need to be taken off the streets. Instead, old people, Asians, and Jews are targets with legs in New York City. Half of New Jersey's cars are now in Brazil. The reason: enforcement of the law would be too harmful, too unjust, for the criminals, especially those innocent, repeat offender teens in your kitchen at 4 a.m., with a gun, who made off with your car and your watch. They mustn't lose their freedom to steal. For your family, actually being unsafe is aces. In New Jersey, the same families are being burglarized twice, by the same offenders. There is no fear of the law; the "moving forward" new justice system is unjust to the burglarized, the coldcocked. Deal with it. There's a creeping blob - like the movie, it just 'keeps getting bigger and bigger'-- of what defines hurt, what exactly it is that makes someone in 2023 America versus say, Somalia, "unsafe." And who, with impunity, can inflict harm at will. Expressing one's opinion on what constitutes being a woman inflicts irreparable harm and can get you fired. In the name of a perversion of safety, the actual harm's been done to you. No matter one's views on abortion, AG Garland allowed unlawful, threatening 'protests' outside justices' homes and Biden minions encouraged it. Meanwhile, Garland accused Louden County parents opposed to indoctrination of their kids --and erasing earned scholastic merit --
of being 'terrorists.' Helicopters hovered over school board meetings - but not over the justices homes. Nothing much happened to the anarchist mobs who turned our cities into barbecue pits, either. The actual harm was done the residents of Portland, Seattle, Chicago. The only journalist who wrote about that, at least in a major publication, was Nellie Bowles. Both those mobs and the ones that broke into our capitol are threats to a civil, livable country. The left will not acknowledge the double standard. We need more people saying both are bad.
re: "The only journalist who wrote about that, at least in a major publication, was Nellie Bowles."
yep, because the "major (mainstream) publications" were colluding with corrupt elements in the national security agencies to do "narrative control" in the commercial media.
and now the twitter files have exposed how toxic and corrupt the collusion between mainstream commercial media, social media platforms and the national security apparatus was.
and of course the mainstream media is ignoring or lying about the twitter files, which is consistent with their long history of that kind of bs.
You remind me of someone I went to college with
The "enlightened progressive" is an oxymoron.
No president did more to set back race relations and inject secular racism into the USA than Wilson . Add that to his resume
He was a eugenicist, who like other American eugenicists of the time, inspired a certain mustached Austrian.
As are the modern "elites". They just expanded the application of their horrendous policies. They are far from elite. They are just the largest hogs at the trough.
Pigs Lynne!
Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered
There’s a lesson there somewhere
As are Billy Gates and crew.
More than obama/holder? No way. For you to be correct absolutely nothing before Wilson would have been seen in a racist lens and everything afterwards was. Possibly a tie, but that's as far as your thesis could possibly go.
Read American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace,and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis by Adam Hochschild. He was so much more than a racist and eugenicist.
If possible could you give me the gist ?
It's a history book about the late 1910s and early 1920s and how the United States was roiled by violent social unrest, paranoia, government censorship, mass surveillance and repression, lynchings and pogroms. It not about the war but what happened here during and after the war. How the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 was used to declare any kind of anti- war sentiments criminal. How novelists and playwrights were arrested. It became a federal offense to send seditious news papers and magazines through the mail. The Department of Justice deputized civilian vigilantes with over 250 thousand members into American Protective League. They tapped phones, placed bugs, raided homes. I'm not done reading it, but you get the gist. I knew some of this but never realized how contentious it really was.
Yep. There was a "secret" civil war between labor radicals and industrialists from 1890 and 1915, which was a major part of the "violent social unrest" and "repression".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Trouble_(Lukas_book)
I knew some of this, but was clueless on how little I really knew. The good thing is I can learn it now.
Sounds a lot like the crisis ("crisis") of today. Which kind of makes this FP author's point: that people tend to believe they're living in a uniquely critical moment in history, when really it's more same old, same old. Learning we're not, that this is just a reprise of a century ago, is actually oddly comforting.
Exactly. Government overreach, and censorship. An overbearing judicial system that's out of control. The difference now is that we're all interconnected, and digitized. Our government deputized all these social media companies and the people who work for them to censor us. Instead of 250 thousand people, who knows how many their are.
The major differences are digital capitalism and postmodern social conditions, including the suburban consumer economy.
Political conflict now is about competition between different factions of the power elites:
1. finance, including global finance
2. industrial-managerial capitalism (actual production of goods)
3. digital capitalism (suburban consumerism)
"Woke" bs is a mask that digital capitalism and global finance hides behind, to the detriment of the industrial working classes.
https://attackthesystem.com/2021/12/06/curtis-yarvin-mencius-moldbug-on-tucker-carlson-today-09-08-21/
Andrew Jackson was fairly draconian in his approach to race relations. Makes Wilson look saintly.
Jackson was dealing with native tribes in the pay of the British and Spanish empires whose goal was the thwart the expansion of the american frontier.
Yes and let's not forget that the despicable Woody and his pals yukked it up watching the cartoonishly racist Birth of a Nation in the White House. A more loathsome human is hard to conjure.
I think, NC, the author isn’t taking historical sides at all, if the person you’re referring to in your last two sentences is him.
My thought, too. But I still "liked" the comment for everything that came before the final two lines.
We are doomed!
Ah. The 'progress' of gig work, stagnant wages, and lurid obsessions with melanin and genitalia.
But hey, elites have a little more melanin now. The First X to Do Y!
Wake me up when progress means wages are tied to productivity.
I’ll join you if when we both wake up CEO’s aren’t making ten million dollars and more annually in salaries and stock options in charge of companies that don’t make a dime. If productivity works at the bottom, as it should - it should work at the top as well.
Absolutely. This used to be the case before the 1980s. Bosses and workers can both do very well. Since the 1980s, 99% of the productivity gains have travelled upwards.
Agreed.
"Many observers who say that they cannot understand how anyone can be worth $100 million a year do not realize that it is not necessary that they understand it, since it is not their money.
"The idea that everything must 'justify itself before the bar of reason' goes back at least as far as the 18th century. But that just makes it a candidate for the longest-running fallacy in the world."
-Thomas Sowell
https://www.nationalreview.com/2007/01/greed-fallacy-thomas-sowell/
But value for money? A CEO’s contribution and service not equalling the exorbitant cost incurred?
Now that I understand and so does everyone else.
The fact the money is not mine does not disqualify my judgement.
I get the sense you didn't read the article I linked. It's quite short.
First off, I want to be clear that you're entitled to your judgment. I wasn't positing that it's right or wrong. Rather, I was pointing out that the ability of outsiders to understand why a CEO gets paid so much has zero bearing on whether it's the right decision.
Here's what really gets me when it comes to CEO pay. Everyone is primed and ready to rush to judgment about the pay of a CEO for a company they probably don't even work for, typically judging that they get paid too much. On the other hand, there seems to be no interest whatsoever in trying to figure out what the reasons are behind the decision that actually gets made. Obviously someone had to decide to give the CEO that much money, which means they had a reason to do it. Is no one interested in their reasons?
As far as productivity is concerned, you have to look at it both ways. Not just how much money is to be gained but what could be lost. A CEO of a large company can, by poor decision making, cost the company billions of dollars. If billions of dollars are at stake, is it really such a bad decision to pay millions of dollars to get the right person?
I submit Bob Jordan, SW Airlines CEO, as proof.
Proof of what?
SW was founded by an operations guy, and when he retired the airline was driven into the ground by bean counters.
Jordan was picked to return the airline to an operations-oriented management style, to correct the deep damage caused by the bean counters. He just got started dealing with the damage from the bean counters and COVID.
Upgrading IT infrastructure in a previously dysfunctional organizational culture is almost impossible, and usually very expensive.
According to the "Chaos Reports", there has been an overall 80% project failure rate in the IT industry, historically (probably somewhat of an exaggeration to get people's attention on an actual major problem).
Well you’re right that I didn’t link up. Sorry.
But in the sense that paying millions of dollars to someone who might be involved in billions of dollars of business decisions and accept it even though it might be spectacularly unsuccessful (the recent troubles of Southwest Airlines comes to mind) then isn’t it worth questioning?
Especially if I was a shareholder..
SW airlines was well managed by the founder, using an operations management paradigm.
When the founder left, bean counters took over, causing the current problems.
The new CEO was tasked with returning to an operations paradigm, which COVID slowed down.
Global finance and digital capitalism are expanding, and hiding behind "woke" nonsense pushed by a deeply corrupt mass, commercial media mostly inhabited by the PMC (professional-managerial class, see Ehrenreich).
After giving birth to the PMC, Industrial-managerial capitalism is now in decline (in the USA).
Yes. Exactly. Thank you for being succinct and to the point.
Ah, the incomparable hubris of the left's Great Plan for Humanity. All it requires is that we the people recognize that we are too stupid to run our own lives - but they are not. Smart enough to make the money, since we do all the work - but not smart enough to spend it, since they do all the thinking. The problem is that so far they are batting zero, but of course that is because "real socialism (a.k.a. communism) has never been tried."
I rather like Lincoln's response to the group of clergymen who visited the White House during the War of Yankee Aggression and reassured the president that they had prayed on the matter, and God was on his side.
His response? "I'm not so concerned with whether God is on my side as I am whether I am on God's side."
We, the unwashed masses, may not be that smart, but we know right from wrong. And we know that an ideology which, instead of being adopted voluntarily, must be shoved down the public's throat by force, is wrong. And evil. They are not on God's side.
I love that quote by lincoln. I think those of us who are on God's side see those who are not as very unhappy people. They seem to have no joy or pleasure in life only complains and misery. I live in Mexico and what impresses me most is the joy with which people live under what are very trying economic circumstances. The children are the happiest most well-adjusted kids I think I have ever seen. Generations of a family are together always grandma is never shoved into a nursing home or an assisted living place. Kids are not bundled off to daycare and left there to be raised by someone else as the parents go to work so they can buy more stuff from Amazon or a bigger house with granite countertops. I have no problem with people desiring such things. I just wish that the desire did not come with such unhappiness. I am in my older years, and I am so glad I am here where I can see the joy that love and peace can bring. I wish that for all of my us friends and 2023.
Well understood. It was the same in the mountain community where I grew up. Coming from that culture and having worked as a coal miner made me a real outsider in the indoor world of medical school, although I was the same age as everybody else.
Our psychiatry rotation was interesting. The professors basically turned the medical students loose to manage patients by themselves; we had a "team meeting" with staff a couple of times per week; otherwise we were on our own. I liked to say that we entertained ourselves by screwing with the patients' brains, and the higher-ups entertained themselves by screwing with us.
Many of our patients were depressed middle-aged women and old people staring at the prospects of nursing homes or living alone until the nursing home was inevitable. The self-centered staff doctors labored mightily to turn us into equally self-centered young doctors - with pretty good success. They were adamant that old folks had no claim on their children's lives. Most of my colleagues bought into that nonsense, but for me it was the prosaic turd in the punch bowl. No compromise: You By God took care of your parents, just like they had taken care of you.
I guess the staff and other studs, as we called ourselves, thought they could prevail by force of number, but they didn't understand the Highlander mind. As Col. Creighton Abrams - later Maj. General Abrams of Abrams tank fame, told the 101st Airborne troops at the Battle of the Bulge, "Well, it looks like they've got us surrounded. The poor bastards." I finally ended all conversation by informing the chief of the department that his parents had done a very poor job in raising him. "The poor bastards."
The poor bastards. God. How I ever graduated is still a mystery.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Thank you
But-we are that smart-it's just hard to think straight when battered senseless by the psyop. I'm hoping subscription journalism is a first step forward.
Well I guess Bari and the Free Press team gotta find some lefties to write here. However, any writer who can claim that history goes in reverse at 50 miles per hour and then name Putin, Trump, and, for fuck’s sake, Reagan, as examples has no credibility. Reagan? Seriously, he lead from the White House and brought this country out of the depths of economic, social, and political miasma of Prog Hero Jimmy Carter. And a writer who would align and name ANY American President with Putin has serious cognition and and comprehension issues.
I think one point of the article was to highlight that one side’s “the end is happening” is another side’s “there’s hope for our country...” I sensed criticism of today’s progressives that view everything as a threat to our democracy while using religious-strength conviction to push their nonsense. I didn’t take him mentioning Reagan as a dig--rather the perfect example of someone half the country (or more) deeply admired while the rest of the country viewed as satin himself. The point being the two sides have always been and will likely be different. And it’s asinine for one side to think it is correct on all matters and needs to force the other side to see the light.
Perhaps I’m way off but I appreciated the humility in him calling out progressives for their flawed self-perceptions.
Except that he did nothing of the sort. This article was a ruse - the author pretended to reject the concept of a "right side of history" while repeatedly promoting the idea that "progressivism" is right and its opponents are history's greatest evils.
The people on the "left" (including "progressives") think that the flaws in leftism can be fixed. The main point of this article is to describe one or more fixes.
I've been watching these kinds of debates for decades, and the sad reality is that the people proposing to fix the "left" are invariably stabbed in the back by another dominant, usually corrupt, faction on the left.
The fact is that the "left" has always either (1) lacked a coherent model of human nature and social order, or (2) rejected those things.
So, as George Orwell found out when fighting "fascists" in the Spanish Civil War, it was far more likely that he was going to be killed because of fratricidal infighting between communist factions than by the "fascists".
Absolutely right - one thing that I don’t find much on Common Sense or now Free Press is nuance. It black or white and the good guys have to win at all costs. I voted for Reagan as a 30 year old and wouldn’t support any Republican today except for Liz CHENEY 2024. How’s that for nuance?
I was a bit disappointed that this turned in to a bashing of progressives. I'd prefer we drop the labels and just discuss issues. I have no doubts that there are issues that "progressives" and "conservatives" actually agree on. The labels allow us to write off others without having discussions.
You grossly misappropriate blame for the "bashing of progressives".
Only a left-wing ideologue could read this article as a good-faith attempt to reach across the aisle, rather than the repeated, gratuitous slander of people who are far better human beings than its author.
The bashing of progressives pretty much proves the author's point about people going to their tribe and not thinking for themselves. After he commented on Reagan it was inevitable which is too bad as was an excellent piece.
Good point. You summed it up better than I did.
Protecting our democracy is not a job for half measures. Self sacrifice, courage and leadership. Is that what I want in a leader? Hard yes. 6 years ago I wouldn’t have supported her as much - we live in a vastly different world today. I trust her completely with protecting our most valuable asset.
So you would support a neocon for President in 2024? Endless war!?!?! No nuance, silliness.
What exactly is a neocon? That has never been explained to me. As far as I can tell, it's anyone who doesn't support the left. We are supporting a war right now and it isn't conservatives doing it.
Neoconservatives were originally people on the "left" that turned against the left during the cold war in opposition to communist totalitarianism.
To keep their racket ("controlled opposition") going after the end of the cold war, they promoted other forms of war-mongering.
The corrupt, corporate Democrats have adopted many previously "conservative" positions, including neoconservative war mongering. They have mutated into puppets of the military-industrial-complex.
Clintons. 1990s. Bosnian wars. Wag the Dog: "win" in domestic politics by fomenting hatred of Russia to sound "tough on foreign policy". Sound familiar? Biden is doing the same stupid shit with Ukraine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism
That's how I felt after reading this. Speaking and listening to "the other side" is our way forward, as long as both "sides" adopt beginning the conversation.
Such dialogue is outside the Overton Window of "progressivism".
Putin called the fall of the Soviet Union a catastrophe, pretty sure Reagan had something to do with that
This is a great author. Excellent Sheep is an amazing book. But he lost me when he said people still like Jackson. Jackson??
The reality is the progressives already won. The left never gives back power once it gets some. That’s why the arc always bends to the left. The right won’t win another election.
The right won't win another election.....
We will if it's not rigged.
And if it is........
Like I said, the right won’t be able to win again. They couldn’t in the Soviet Union, they can’t in China, anywhere the left takes power, they make sure their arc of history never goes right again.
Bruce, that has been my great fear as well. I doubt that a Republican will ever be elected president again. The party is not unified even over something like speaker of the house. I am hopeful that Harmeet Dillon will wrest control from the current head, of the RNC and modernize the way we do elections. Forgive any capitalizations that I have been ignoring, because I am forced to dictate the great majority of any thoughts.
I would not have agreed with you until the 2022 elections. If the right didn't win then, the can't anymore.
Candidates, Bruce. Candidates. Four Senate races could have been won if only the GOP picked people who sounded sane.
Americans aren’t stupid. If only we could say that about some of the people both parties have nominated.
Hope you enjoyed New Years.
He's a self-proclaimed Progressive - he probably meant "Michael" Jackson
Yep. I stopped reading after that idiocy. If these people weren't so dangerous, they'd be comical.
I agree but I found the insight fascinating.
There are no Leftists who can do better. Their ideology requires such delusions.
I think the writer attempted to describe the reversals these leaders represented - he is not comparing the leaders themselves as you suggest, Running Man.
Reagan reversed fifty years of liberal interventionist policies, Putin reversed the protocol European order that has existed at least since the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in ‘68. And Trump upended top down political discourse and stasis between two moribund parties with bottom up support.
All reversals yes, but not at all similar.
OK, your comment made me pause and reflect. It is possible that was his approach - I'd stated in an earlier comment that perhaps he was trolling the readership or engaging in some sarcasm. Given his deep socialist roots, however, I still have my doubts. I conclude that either his is not a thoughtful writer (thus laid out that "comparison" without thinking through how it could be received - that is, not an effective nor articulate advocate). But I still have my doubts about his view.
Me, too!!!
"We revile Andrew Jackson, Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, but they applaud them." I've been a conservative for most of my life (I'm 71) and I've never spoken with another conservative who didn't revile Joe McCarthy.
Just a glitch in an otherwise excellent article.
Nixon did more things economically left than Clinton , the author needs to ditch the caricatures. Imagine when he finds out Reagan cut nuclear weapons and amnestied a whole bunch of immigrants.
Caricatures is all they have. That is all you can have from a safe space.
True.
I’m not a fan of Reagan’s policies in general , but that doesn’t mean that he didn’t accomplish some good, maybe great things. This Manichaen view of presidents isn’t helpful. It kills nuance for the sake of dogma.
You’re right about Nixon, Rob. And not only economically. He brought in the EPA and came oh so close to national government funded health care (imagine that).
If Nixon were alive today he would be branded a flaming liberal by most Republicans.
Nixon had no choice at the time, he was forced into compromises with "liberal" Democrats and voters.
The corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats of the 1960s were nationalists.
Corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats now are (mainly) globalists/internationalists, puppets controlled by global finance and media-tech oligarchs, but more so Democrats.
The big schizm in the Republican party is between working class and traditional populist-nationalists (Trumpism) and corporatists.
The corporatists in both parties will use old tricks to pull the wool over the eyes of populists, including Trump supporters, by using fake populist rhetoric.
The fight today over Speaker of the House is a perfect example of the precarious position of the populist-right, just as Bernie getting stabbed in the back was a good example of the populist-left getting stabbed in the back by corporate Democrats.
All I can say is that before the Donald came down that escalator in 2015, I do not think a populist Republican wing ever existed..
Ok, so you are ignorant of history.
Republicans ended slavery.
There was a significant faction of populist, progressive Republicans in the early 1900s.
Until the 1960s-80s, when Dixiecrats (mostly ) left the Democratic Party and became Republicans, there were many "liberal" Republicans, such as my father (USAF combat veteran, fighter pilot), descendent of a Union Army combat veteran.
My father left the Republican party and became an independent because he was deeply disgusted when Reagan become Governor of California in the 1960s. Millions have followed.
So your USAF father was a Rockefeller Republican. Congratulations. Do they even exist anymore? They're extinct.
Would Mitt Romney qualify?
So if you count Theodore Roosevelt as the progressive Republican, of the late 19th or early 20th century as he seduced America with his swash bucking life style and anti trust busting ideals, I stand corrected. Good on you.
But except for that interregnum when the hell was the GOP even interested in the working man? Hoover? (laughably). Nixon (you know, maybe..). Reagan (seriously?). Basically from 1980 on the GOP's mo was just cut taxes and let the market do the rest. No policies necessary.
Your assertion that Republicans ended slavery is right, but was the Republican Party of 1940, 1960, 1980, 2000, 2010 the same? Is the 2022 iteration the same?? In name only.
Republicans are a joke (as the House counts votes for an impotent Speaker held hostage by the far Right) and of course the Democratic Party is no better.
You say I'm ignorant of history, so don't join me in my ignorance.
No, not just a “glitch”. His whole premise is flawed but couched nicely in a critique of his own side. He’s a Trojan horse. I would say watch this one far more closely than the ones openly calling for so called “Progressive” ideology to be implemented. At least we know who they are.
If he's a Trojan horse, where are the Greeks? They forgot to climb onboard before he launched, I think.
Hahahaha! They’re hiding in plain sight in academia, government, media, DOJ, corporate America, among other places.
It’s why we have Substack and The Free Press.
Already inside the walls.
And a dead giveaway that the author knows zero actual conservatives
I think you've hit on it. His knowledge of his enemies comes from his friends.
Left-wing media tells right-wing people what left-wing people think and tells left-wing people what right-wing people think.
The disparity between the two sides' knowledge of the other is gigantic.
Me either. My folks have always opposed nazism, fascism, socialism, and communism. Maybe that is why I easily recognize it for what it is no matter what they call it these days. I prefer American exceptionalism.
Andrew Jackson saved America at New Orleans and Richard Nixon was hated by the left because he exposed the Soviet spies in our government. The proggies still think the Rosenbergs were framed innocents, despite the KGB records proving their guilt.
And Alger Hiss. McCarthy was a loathsome pig, but he was right about the communists in the Truman and Roosevelt administrations.
TxFrog, I am enjoying your reference to Alger hiss. I was thinking about Whittaker Chambers this morning and how the left hated him for so many bogus reasons, some of which had to do with the fact that he wasn’t from the upper class. what a highly intelligent man he was, and I remember reading his wonderful autobiography many years ago.
Andrew Jackson won a battle at New Orleans against the British after the peace treaty ending the War of 1812 has already been signed. Hardly saving America.
He was also a genocidal maniac who instituted the Trail of Tears deportation of the Five Civilized Tribes -- which term I use to make very clear I'm absolutely not woke and to remind the reader that that the Indians who were force-marched to Oklahoma (with their slaves) were removed because they were successfully competing economically with Americans of European ancestry, not to protect anyone from savagery. (You can't pass a $20 bill in a lot of places in Oklahoma for good reason -- can we please get Harriet Tubman on the $20's?). And... Jackson was the founder of the modern Democratic Party. Hardly a great hero for American conservatives.
My thoughts precisely. One has to wonder if the author actually spoke with people who “applaud” such figures, or made a rhetorical leap into oblivion with that statement.
There is no “version” of history: there is only what actually happened. And now there are too many unemployed PhD’s in the field who have learned that an education in the propaganda business of “history” does not make for a career.
Unfortunately, there are versions of history. I once knew a Russian pianist who with her ballet dancer husband and two small children had escaped the Soviet Union just before it fell. They were living near Philadelphia trying to adjust to a different way of life. She told me that one of the hardest things for them was dealing with the gradual certainty that everything they thought they had known about history in the last hundred years was a lie. She said they flat out didn't believe it at first. But as time went on and they became more accustomed to the diversity of sources and opinions and the freedom of opinions and their interplay, it crept up on them until suddenly it struck them like a physical thing. She described it like an awful sensation, like nausea. It sounded horrible.
One of the difficult things for her husband was that here everyone assumed he was gay, whereas in Russia that was less common in his line of work.
I heard her play at a private concert once, mostly Chopin. It was one of the only two times I have found myself crying uncontrollably while listening to music. The other time it was at a Horowitz concert.
"History" and many other things can be interpreted differently.
1. facts, data and evidence are best seen through objective, systematic, rational thought, but they frequently are seen subjectively, sometimes by corrupt, biased people
subjective, emotive narratives are frequently more influential.
objective narratives are hard to learn, and are usually a minority position.
one of the triumphs of western civilization was to advance the interests of a rational-scientific minority, via high-social-trust in social institutions, such as Constitutional order (as opposed to medieval social order, such as mythic religion and Fealty Oaths).
2. interpretive narratives vary, and are easily corrupted
3. meta-narratives can allow people to escape their interpretive biases and echo chambers, but not in any absolute way.
https://meaningness.com/pattern
That was also my thought. I don't know what conservatives he hangs around with, but I have heard very little applause for any of those three he mentions. The closest I've heard anyone come was an assertion that Nixon was not as bad as he is generally regarded. Oh, I've also heard a few people point out (in very recent years!) that, despite how despicable McCarthy was, it seems that he was not wrong after all about the infiltration of Marxists.
Nixon took us off the gold standard too.
I also found Jackson surprising in that group. A populist, certainly, and a likely comparison with Trump. But not a conservative idol that I've ever heard.
Thank you!! This line bothered me a lot.
My thought, exactly.
There are far too many "glitches" for this article to deserve any compliments.
Leftists are forever waging war on their mortal enemy: the truth. The "mistakes" in this article are ideological requirements.
I don't applaud Nixon either, and haven't since 1971. Joe McCarthy was hateful.
Exactly!
The one thing progressives will never understand is that human beings cannot be made to embrace the collective. Humans instinctively care about their own, they will happily work and struggle and sacrifice for their own. But not for others, especially others who don’t work and struggle too. This simple fact is why progressive collectivism will always fail. And why capitalism with all its warts is the only system that works.
Good comment. Collectivism vs individualism is the crux of our world.
True. But you also need people with the courage to believe it, say it and fight for it.
Embrace the collective, no, but people can be made to submit. And thus we are living the plot of 1984.
And the elites are no different. They will use whatever advantages they can obtain, whether gained by merit or birth, for further increase of what is only theirs for the benefit of their own. In a capitalist economy this at least also benefits most others who are not elites. In all other economies this is invariably redistributive. That is to say, zero-sum loss to everyone else.
Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried." The same is true of capitalism. Every system develops a black market, and the key word there is MARKET.
Great comment. Even China figured that out. It's hamstrung by total lack of a Rule of Law. I'm surprised the author didn't mention who they arbitrarily confiscated the capital of the Ali Baba billionaire (Jack *?).
I love this stuff. Collectivity versus individuality. Such an old saw.
Yesterday was Sunday. Probably a third of the country was watching the best example of a collective in action. It’s called the NFL. In which both players and owners got together and are getting rich at our expense. Billions of dollars worth. All for payment of a service.
Marx would love it!
They got so good at it the NBA and Major League Baseball followed.
And it’s still capitalism. Warts and all.
There are so many ways my tax dollar is wasted but most offensive is the county tax that pays for a stadium built to appease a super wealthy association, owners, and players. The stadium is still part of our tax debt, but the team is no longer in the county and the NFL, owners, and players all profited from the move.
This arrangement is an example of corrupt welfare state to the most undeserving people ever.
Sports fans would severely punish politicians if they didn't support professional sports scams.
Bread and circuses.
Right you are.
Sports - The Great Safety Valve as it were. Hey, it could be worse, gladiators in a ring fighting to the death and all that.
I do not disagree. As was said, capitalism, warts and all.
Owners, players, leagues of lawyers and layers of government all working together - wink, wink, nod, nod and handshakes all around - and obscene amounts of money flow to all the undeserved.
No one’s at fault since everyone buys in - but then everyone’s at fault, precisely because we all buy in.
Like I said above, millions of Americans are glued to the tube enjoying a hybrid of socialism and capitalism, a collective money making machine unlike any other in the economy, since anti monopoly legislation apparently does not apply to sports leagues.
One winders why (but we know the answer..).
You badly, badly misapprehend "collectivism".
It is not cooperation. Indeed, it's closer to being the opposite of cooperation. Markets are cooperation. Collectivism sets everyone against everyone else, competing for an ever-diminishing share of the zero-sum.
According to the Oxford Dictionary a collective is a cooperative enterprise. And the NFL is a cooperative enterprise, everyone within it working with each other to advance the goals of the collective. Player and owner alike, splitting the spoils more or less equally.
Use a dictionary that way and everyone who practices science is a scientologist.
Do you seriously mean to argue that individualists oppose cooperation? Perhaps you'll tell us that everyone on the Right loves McCarthyism too?
Perhaps JD, there are more meanings than even you might imagine..The word is applied to more than one situation.
There’s the collective farms of the big bad Soviet Union, of which being cooperative was not exactly a choice. (Perhaps they should have been called forced labour camps instead)
And then there is the more benign example I offered - where everyone involved work together willingly for shared gain.
Collective bargaining - is that a good thing or bad? Does a worker go on strike alone and get nothing? Or get into a union and perhaps get something?
The NFL and other sports leagues go one step further.
Still capitalism to me - of the monopoly kind..
I don’t see how poor Joe McCarthy is involved.
In evolutionary terms, humans are adapted to nature via collective intelligence (CI). The oldest forms of CI were kinship-group based. (Ulam lectures, 2008, Santa Fe Institute)
Pre-liberal (classical liberalism) and ILLIBERAL social forms are typically mythic, authoritarian and conformist.
Classically liberal social forms, originally in NW europe, emerged because of the early Church's ban on cousin marriage and the nuclear family, which broke the power of clans. Without clannish cousin-marriage, the gene pool changed as the urban commoner classes grew, literacy and wealth increased, innovation flourished and demand for political participation ("democracy") increased.
Pre-liberal values were based on communion.
Classically liberal values rejected the oppressive features of mythic communion (aristocracy, ecclesiastic elites) in favor of agentic values (individual achievement).
As in the 17th century Enlightenment?
Greco-Roman rationalism, then Neo-Platonism.
“The trouble with the Maples, and they’re quite convinced they’re right; is that the oaks are just too lofty, and they grab up all the light...
Now there’s no more Oak oppression, for they passed a noble law; and the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw”
Rush
The Trees
In 1967, I was five. My parents were pretty much a minority who actually canvassed for Brewer over Wallace, protested Jim Crow and believed they were doing the right “progressive” thing for others.
By the time dad passed away he said he no longer fit into the world, having been labeled a racist by those he once fought to literally free from genuine violent oppression.
So, history has an arc, and so long as race hustles are careers and cowards remain in positions of real responsibility, America will decline.
Now I wonder if much of the south will declare independence, but this time to avoid being on the wrong end of a saw.
I for one would be happy to be free of DC and the coastal elites.
Are they not coastal bigots?
The first year I began to teach in Alabama I had a student whose father worked in the first Wallace administration, until the day after the “stand in the schoolhouse door.” Apparently in the limousine ride back to Montgomery Governor Wallace remarked, “Those rednecks out there think I actually did something.” So this guy’s father resigned his position because he thought Wallace to be a fake. This was 1963. The first time George Wallace ran for governor he was the liberal candidate on race relations. In order to win he became a staunch segregationist politically.
The lesson here is that a politician’s public political views do not necessarily reflect what he believes and often hold their supporters in contempt. In Wallace’s case he only believed in getting elected. Another person who worked with the first Wallace administration told me Wallace had no interest in government policy. So when he had a talented staff (first term in office), things went well. After that his staffs were not particular good and it harm the state’s economic development (as did the segregation laws then in place).
Being from a republican family in the pre civil rights era south, I have trouble trusting any democrat politician because of the ways in which local governments would harass republicans.
Yep, the neo-confederate propagandists/trolls like "Lynne" in these comments are plain liars, distortion artists and creeps. Probably paid by the Alex Jones troll farm or something like that.
Similarly to the "far left" (Frankfurt school, postmodern neo-marxists), much of the "far right" was created by the CIA as "controlled opposition"
https://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/78-78/45197-im-convinced-that-the-whole-national-review-is-a-cia-operation-murray-rothbard
Sam I admire your parents and am sorry for your father's disappointment at the end of his days. But the truth is that the Civil War was fought by the Unionists to cement federal domination. And economics. Your people were pawns in their propaganda. Do not play their game.
Exactly. It was the beginning of Federal power over the former Republic. I don't know how else it could have gone though.
That's the problem, isn't it? One cannot really wish for slave-owners to have triumphed, even if slavery itself would likely have been over within another few decades. But the rise of Federalism has done and continues to do untold damage. I have to wonder what Lincoln would think, if he could see the end result.
The southern slave system produced such fabulous wealth, such as from semi-mechanized cotton production for export markets, that it caused people's heads to spin at the time.
The fact that Jim Crow state-sponsored terrorism came into existence as a system of post-slavery is a good indicator that a "free south" would not have ended slavery anytime soon, except maybe in some meaningless legal sense that had little or no practical application.
Politics and the legal system in the south was deeply corrupt, and stayed that way until the 1960s.
The Confederate plan to expand to the Pacific and then invade and conquer Mexico and Central America is documented in the archives of the Commonwealth of Virgina.
An expanded agricultural-slave Confederate mini-Empire would have been a severe threat to the Union, which is why it had to be exterminated.
The only unfortunate thing is that a lot more of the Confederate leadership and economic elites were not hung for treason after the war, cleaning up the southern gene pool of sociopathic tendencies and the lingering hate ideologies that persisted through the period of Jim Crow state-sponsored terrorism (1880-1960s).
Ok, so you are neo-confederate. That explains a lot.
The US Civil War was the inevitable result of the earlier US Revolutionary War, which was the inevitable result of the English Civil War, which was the inevitable result of the war between Manorials and Celts/Border Reivers that went on for 100s of years in the medieval era.
The USA's system is based on Manorial culture, not Celtic. Celtic/Border Reiver culture is marginal. The culture of Cavalier slave plantations was defeated and marginalized.
Neo-confederates might win against a weakened Federal-Manorial system, but their legacy will still be medieval and regressive.
"Lynne" admits to being a neo-confederate:
https://www.thefp.com/p/there-is-no-right-side-of-history/comment/11561669
Looks like the substack email notification glitch struck again.
I was responding to "Lynne" [ https://substack.com/profile/50584023-lynne ], who admitted to being a neo-confederate.
https://www.thefp.com/p/there-is-no-right-side-of-history/comment/11602182
Not at all. I'm originally from California for one thing; and had I been alive then would undoubtedly have fought for the North (given my contemporary moral compass). The US Civil war was certainly inevitable short of allowing the fragmentation of the republic which the northern states couldn't allow due to the control of trade up the Mississippi it would have given the south and its consequences for western expansion. That doesn't make the inevitable increase in federal power any less dangerous and lamentable. But it has taken a couple hundred years to get to the point of proving this.
The manorial culture you refer to really only applies to the south at the time, which is where the scot/reivers settled for the most part. I don't at all agree that the "USA system" was based on that. It arose in spite of that. Try reading Mathew Stewart's "Nature's God: the Heretical Origin of American Republic" - it has the most interesting account of it I've yet encountered.
Not sure what it could have explained had I been a "neo-confederate" in any event.
WEIRD:
W = western, classically liberal, high-social-trust Constitutional order
E = Educated: literacy and numeracy increased, especially toward the end of the medieval era
I = Industrialized (also Innovative in business, science, technology)
R = Rich, wealth increased as the urban commoner class and river trade increased
D = Democratic (small "D") - participatory politics, such as fueros, communas and cortes in the Spanish March (a buffer zone against the Moors)
https://weirdpeople.fas.harvard.edu/overview
Manorialism was what the feudal system evolved into after the early Church banned cousin marriage in the peasant classes to break up the power of clans (where inbreeding and cousin marriage was common).
It wasn't a static thing, it evolved over about 500 years, toward the "WEIRD" system (Henrich at Harvard).
Higher IQ was selected for because of increased literacy and the spread of market economics along the river and sea trade routes (Hanseatic League, etc.)
High-social-trust ("classical liberalism") increased as Constitutional order replaced medieval Fealty Oaths (clan honor systems).
The urban commoner classes expanded as wealth along the trade routes expanded, scientific and technological innovation expanded, participatory politics expanded (until about 1492).
Expanding Maritime economics and Manorialism co-emerged, eventually the Dutch led the way to free markets and the most "capitalist" (free-market) people migrated to the areas of swamp that were being drained and land was being offered that didn't require fealty to aristocrats.
The Hanseatic-Dutch system of Free Cities and market economics then spread to London, where it was somewhat insulated from political problems and wars on the Continent.
So, the Manorial gene pool is different from the Celtic, Slavic and Roman gene pools.
The Black Plagues intensified the selection for "classically liberal" genetic traits and de-selected for pre-Liberal, clannish, inbred traits, as was especially noticeable in the Celtic gene pool.
"...history is perfectly capable of slamming into reverse and backing up at 50 miles an hour. It happened with Ronald Reagan."
I mean, really? The president who won 46 states... then did such a miserable job of running the country the for four years that he got re-elected by winning 49?
Could it be that his predecessor's presidency had been a failed experiment that needed to be rejected so that a more effective progress might emerge? That's a plausible explanation, I should think.
In any event, electoral politics is in the eye of each beholder. Let's just call it a day: leave it at that.
Who bequeathed us a peace dividend that extended into Obama's terms and set our economy on path of prosperity that endured well into the Clinton and early Bush years? Oh that President Reagan. Would that another such man emerge to save us from the prevailing lunacy.
Ross Perot, 1992, "giant sucking sound".
Carter cracked open the door to neoliberalism, Reagan threw it wide open, ultimately stabbing the working class in the back.
Reagan threw the door open to psychotic, war mongering neoconservatism (Project for the American Century, or whatever it was called, etc.)
You should go back to your NRx troll farm or whatever it is (AIPAC?).
Well the author did say he was a progressive - and like most progressives today, obviously thinks that this is a good example of ordinary stupid people voting for someone the elites think was the wrong person for public office.
However, I do like his comparison of the elites and Democrats generally with the old 1980’s version of the TV evangelists. Maybe there is a second career as a TV evangelists for a certain retiring NIH official who can tell everyone who doesn’t agree with him they are going to hell.
I didn’t take it as him bashing Reagan. I took it as an example of how one side would see it as the end of the world while the other half saw it as a saving grace. Same thing with DT. There’s people that view him as worse than Satin and were convinced our country was doomed. On the other side, folks put him on a pedestal just below Jesus. And our country did just fine.
Perhaps my interpretation is way off as I’m not typically defending progressives.
The myth that people who voted for Trump "worship" him or "put him on a pedestal" is nothing but of a piece with the "Trump as Hitler" meme. It's purpose is to demonize those who support his programs as slavering stooges, while casting progressives as individuals battling for "democracy." They are anything but that. Slaves to the collective. Nothing more.
Well I know people personally that think Trump walks on water, as do his sons. I would be willing to bet there are folks that love DT without being able to mention a single policy they agree with. Just like there are folks on the other team that hate him without being able to highlight a reason why.
And I didn’t say everyone that voted for Trump worships him but there are some that do. Just like there were some that thought Obama was the savior himself.
My point is humans are tribal and politicians play on that tribalism. The other team is always the greatest threat to our country and our team is always the country’s last hope. It just keeps repeating itself. And I believe that was the author’s message.
How many people do you know who think that Trump walks on water? Because I know exactly ONE--an elderly lady I was in a play with.
My husband and I voted for Trump the second time (not the first) because of how entirely insane the Democrats had shown themselves to be. I've never liked Trump, but the reaction of the Left to him has revealed a great deal about the danger Progressives pose.
Ditto to the moon and back!
More than a handful. Again, some of them fantasize about the sons becoming president as well. I also know plenty of people that voted for trump because of his policies despite not liking him as a person. I never suggested everyone that voted for him believe he walks on water.
And to play devil’s advocate, I remember listening to team red saying “our country won’t survive Obama” for 8 years. That was Fox News’ entire message for 8 straight years—that and the birth certificate.
Both teams play the “our country is in trouble and we are the only way to save it” game. There’s stupidity and fear used by both sides. My hope is people on both sides recognize that the extreme position of both teams prevents us from having discussion and finding compromise that represents the majority.
I also know many people, myself included, who voted for Trump bc I could not bring myself to vote for Hillary.
And I am old enough to remember how the MSM railed against Biden when he ran for President in 1987 & 2008. Their coverage of him was brutal, though it was his own fault because of the many instances of plagiarism and outright lies, which by-the-way, he continues to do.
The difference now is the MSM hated Trump more than they disliked Biden.
It’s all politics, and the American people are at their mercy.
"Well I know people personally that think Trump walks on water, as do his sons."
On the other hand, there are people who, like me, adore his policies and look at his persona with a jaundiced eye. It's called, "having your priorities straight." His policies directly affected me and my country; his personality did not.
Agree! I voted as much FOR Trump as I voted AGAINST Hillary! However, I’ve never been a fan of his personality, but I loved how well my retirement investments earned, how illegal entry at the Border was down, how gas prices were low, how much he was willing, unapologetically, to put America first, among other positive things while he was President.
I’ve yet to understand WHY the term ‘Make America Great Again’ is so offensive to the Left, except it came from Trump and their ‘TDS’ won’t allow them to realize ‘MAGA’ is no worse than Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ slogan!
BTW, my retirement investments are down 35% since Biden became President …
I know, I know …
EVERYTHING good that happened under Trump was just because he inherited all good things coming off Obama’s leadership.
And, of course, all the bad crap under Biden is because he inherited Trump’s failures. Or, blame Putin!
You have to remember that Leftists think America was NEVER great, so of course they find the idea of America being great AGAIN offensive.
And of course Leftists project their own biases, assuming that Republicans want the BAD parts of the past back instead of the good ones, partly because they think Republicans are evil and therefore can only want bad things and partly because Leftists cannot think of anything that used to be good, EVER.
Trump is a Druid, or the modern equivalent, a magic thinker. He grew up listening to his Scottish mother speak fluent Gaelic.
Trump's populist rhetoric is anti-policy and thus an appeal to marginalized, traditional, working classes people. Trumps base was originally Appalachian Celts.
Trump was/is a working class, F.U. vote to the corrupt establishment.
Trump's rhetoric is inherently a rejection of the establishment's policy abstractions and a rejection of the establishment's colossal failure to self-correct.
Except in this case "the other team" supports truly evil policies. So let's not equivocate about whether they are intentionally evil or just stupidly so.
I'm not trying to pick on you Bruce but this comment could easily appear on thousands of other substacks that lean left, describing anyone that challenges the left. Hell, I see these comments directed at "right wingers" every day on twitter. I guess my point is when we sum up others with labels, it becomes a barrier to communication. I'm not calling you out because I've done it myself many times. It's easier to see when others do it.
Frankly I don't care what you say or whom you claim to know. I know many who voted for Trump who think he's a bloviating ass but voted for his decent policies. And, btw, no longer support him and look to others now. In dramatic contrast, the other side has well intentioned people who are "nice" but who support maniacal, demonic policies such as mutilating children, opening our borders, releasing dangerous felons, mandating dangerous vaccines for people who don't need them, weaponizing our FBI and stomping on freedom of speech. Good people doing true evil.
Besides the Trump as Hitler meme is puerile and juvenile. If Trump were Hitler, what do you think would have happened to Griffin, Madonna and the other Hollywood clowns who criticized him? A stretch on piano wire and then more brutal tortures. But, of course, none of that happened. Not one person was arrested for a political crime under Trump. Nobody lost any rights. Now contrast Biden's reign of terror and stupidity. It's all so tediously idiotic.
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Which means that we have the right—the duty—to teach others how to live. How to speak, think, eat, spend, make love, raise their children, vote."
Yes. So much of this. THIS is why I became involved in Moms for Liberty (go ahead and judge me). I have young kids and it's scary to see how so many people and entitites think they somehow earned the right to do this. Because my kids are involved now in this so-called progressivism, I won't accept it. At the heart of the matter: I just want to be involved as a parent. But we're called every name under the sun because maybe, just maybe, I don't agree. It's ridiculous how many school board members, administrators and teachers seem to feel (ironically,) privileged enough that they have earned the right to raise my kids and do it better than me.
(Unrelated side note: who likes Nixon? Poor example earlier on in the article.)
I do judge you. I judge you sane.
We have only had a federal Department of Education since 1979. You can trace the "how many school board members, ad.inistrators, and teachers ..." directly back its creation.
I’ve suggested eliminating most of the Cabinet level departments and go 50 mph in reverse and return to just having State, Treasury, Justice and....the War Department
What government in the entire 4000 year history of civilization has ever voluntarily shrunk itself?
As long as I’m dreaming, how about blowing up most/all of the TLA’s?
(Three letter agencies)
What can I say, I’m have a dream
Indeed. Wicker v. Filburn should be overturned for the same reason Roe v. Wade was: it was a decision cut out of whole cloth with no basis in the Constitution to have the desired policy outcome (and keep FDR from packing the court).
Well, that’s how roe v wade was tossed.
Education should not involve the government at all, for reasons of obvious conflict of interest.
Moms for Liberty led the charge that flipped our local school board to normality here in Charleston County, SC. Great organization.
In the words of that great sage, William Jefferson Clinton, "Go, Baby!"
Would you have trusted Slick at a Moms for Liberty meeting?
(Although these moms would have had his number and sent that cheap huckster packing......)
"Go Baby" was allegedly his comment to the young fellatrix at his feet.
I recently came across “Grassroots Army”. Some great YouTube videos of parents speaking out against school boards, etc. Check it out if you haven’t already.
A good trend.
When parents began to refuse to parent, the school boards and personnel rushed to fill the void...the camel was invited into the tent! Not saying it belongs there, but explaining why it is there.
An example often seen in the media, a child is bullied online and the school is blamed. A child being harassed online is absolutely wrong. Why aren't parents responsible for setting the limits for access to phones and the internet? Allowing 24/7 access, especially in elementary school, gives multiple bullies and some incredibly vile people the ability to virtually enter a child's bedroom and wake them with an electronic nightmare. Why are parents allowing their child to be a cyber bull stalking classmates at 2 in the morning? Why do parents buy their 8 year old child an MA game allow them to go on line and play without limits and then complain about the results to the school? Making the school aware may be part of the solution, but the resolution requires that the parent engage and take control of the situation.
The abdication of the role of parent created a vacuum and look whose and what ideologies rushed in to correct it. My judgement is that the camel needs to get out of the tent instead of being coaxed to stay.
I agree that there are parents who do not meet my standards but I am loathe to substitute my judgement for theirs. And there are many, many, many parents who are really, really good parents. None are perfect however and neither end of the spectrum justify the erosion of parental rights imposed by the current class of so-called educators. IMO the "it takes a village" mentality created what you are complaining about - far too many parents abandoned their role and turned it over to "the village". Idiot. Din't get me wrong, the support of the village is nice but the primary role is the parents.
At the very least, there have been parents who have supplied the fertilizer if not the seed for school personnel and boards to overreach...the overreach did not magically appear. Each parent is in a unique position to understand the needs of their child and address them, but when parents ask an institution to be a nanny state then the educational institute will step up and be that nanny state with its one size fits all rules. Hopefully, understanding and acknowledging what has contributed to the cause of the problem will put the parents in the parental role and the teachers back in the teaching role.
JoAnne there are many parents who are full blown addicts. That does not justify the overreach in education. The people who will let the web mind their kids will let the school take control too. That does not justify the overreach. It us a power grab pure and simple. The blame lies with those committing the overreach.
Well said! It’s funny in my town people refer to Moms for Liberty as this evil group. So one day I start researching them and realize, Wow!, I guess I’m evil too because I agree with some of their views! So because I say this I am put in a “column” as non-progressive and yet I hold moderate and progressive views also (Hmm, what should I be called then? 😀). I really don’t like being put in a column!
I don’t like how schools are getting away from what their core mission is - math, science, history etc..... they are spending less time on what they are supposed to be doing. As a parent I am responsible for raising my kids and dealing with teaching them how to think critically, eat healthfully, have a healthy relationship, treat people with respect, etc.... NOT THE SCHOOLS!
Have a nice day!
Check out “Grassroots Army” - some great videos on YouTube of parents united & speaking out against school boards, etc.!
Nixon was a great president. You can be sure because the media hated and still hates him so much.
I liked Nixon and I voted for him when I was in college. IMHO he had a lot of strengths, some weaknesses (paranoia, primarily), and made some serious mistakes. In my opinion, the creation of the EPA and taking the nation off the gold standard, effectively ending the Bretton Woods agreement, make Watergate look like a Sunday stroll.
Since that time, the tyranny of those using "environmentalism" has been unrelenting, and compared to the damage done by inflation since taking the collar off the Big Spenders in Congress and all subsequent administrations, that too is trivial. The last I heard of the dollar's value was that it was somewhat less than 5 cents compared to its value in 1971, when Nixon ended the gold standard.
Nixon abused his power, but not as much as did Lyndon Johnson or John Kennedy, and certainly not as much as Joe Biden. But Nixon was a Republican, while the media and Congress were Democrats. Most historians also are Democrats, so Nixon's reputation is settled.
I'm not sure I agree that he was great. But he was certainly not the evil man the press caricatured him as. And I think, like Trump, he went a little "off" as a result of the unremitting smears and lies of the leftists and their media stooges.
He did have a fondness for whisky, when drunk made some questionable decisions
For a Quaker, he should have stayed sober
He might not have been likeable but he was hated by the left because the despised and exposed the communists in our own government.
Sorry, but this article is filled with drivel.
I haven't called myself a Republican for over 20 years (Bush's lies cured me of that nonsense), but no one I ever knew applauded Andrew Jackson (the slave-holding founder of the so-called Democratic Party), Joe McCarthy (a man who used fear and demagoguery to maintain power) or Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon.
The real progressive myth is believing that Scandinavian countries are socialist and that "progressives" will magically never run out of other people's money. Also, the idea that Democrats are liberal is a sad joke because the Left is incredibly illiberal.
Hear! Hear! I want the word "liberal" back for those of us who still believe in free speech, freedom of religions, freedom of conscience and free markets. In Australia, it still has that significance so that the center-right party is the Liberal Party.
Yup. I am sick to death of American conservatives blathering on about "liberals this..." and "liberals that..." thus showing that they have no understanding of liberalism or liberal democracy.
I'm not sure that going along with the linguistic convention in America where the word "liberal" was stolen necessarily shows a lack of understanding of either liberalism or liberal democracy. After all, in America conservatism is about conserving, among other things, the American Founding, which is arguably the most quintessentially liberal (in the proper meaning) event in the history of the world. The word having been stolen by socialists (which of them said, that by calling socialism "liberalism" Americans could be made to accept it?), actual liberals who call themselves conservatives (because in the American context they are) complaining about self-described "liberals" advocating harmful policies is simply part of the landscape of American political language.
Indeed; our Orwellians are powerful, and it has become necessary to use their language to be understood in many settings.
True, but frustrating nonetheless.
One thing is for certain - we are engaged in an existential (the real use of the term not that used by idiots) struggle between the forces of liberty and totalitarianism. Sadly, the progressives are on the side of the latter, the forces of totalitarian darkness. Leading us to a dystopian, 1984-like future. One one side are arrayed the forces of individual freedom and liberty. The forces of small government, no surveillance of citizens. respect for religious freedom and the family. In other words, the forces of light. On the other - the totalitarians, who spy on citizens, brook no dissent, arrange for social credit scores and enforce a brutal, secular dogma of lunacy. Who despise truth and enforce propaganda ministries and suppression of speech and information. The forces of a cold and joyless darkness.
On which path will our country tread? It's up to you. Because if you won't stand against the forces of darkness, the America we know and love will be over. The march of history is determined by the direction chosen by individuals. The path offered by progressives is poison. Reject it.
Perfectly put. It was Reagan who warned we are only one generation away from losing our freedoms. We are watching--in real time--as the so-called progressive, enlightened elites work 24 hours a day to limit them.
True.
But Ayn Rand suggested a different approach in Atlas Shrugged.
A fascinating read about the struggles we face today.
Prescient that a novel written in 1957 could be so accurate about society 60 years later.
Yes, but. . .Atlas Shrugged is a thought experiment, and as such, John Galt's libertarian utopia may not work the same way in practice as it does in theory. Shallow thinking progressives think that they can build some communist utopia out of the air, and that it will bear no resemblance to Ingsoc or the USSR. That's why they always end up being the apparatchiks and useful idiots who prop up the regime. They aren't as smart as they think they are. Libertarians need to do better, and part of how we do that is through realism--adopting only those aspects that will work in practice.
I agree, I have provided elsewhere on this page my “John Galt” manifesto and listed the various real world consequences of progressive policies.
Atlas Shrugged didn't suggest any solution. There was no happy ending. Only an epitaph. The world collapsed for lack of the few who remained who weren't corrupted.
Amen and amen.
The bleak, hairy truth.
I don’t know that I agree that there’s not a “right side” of history but I definitely agree that it’s not always the progressive side. I maintain that history is proving me right in that schools should have reopened fully in fall 2020. Ron DeSantis seems to be have been on the right side of history with covid. IMO.
Don't forget the foolish Fukuyama who brayed that history ended with the fall of the USSR and that liberal democracy would be the dominant world order.
Tools abound........
It is by definition never the "progressive" side, because "progressivism" is Orwellianism.
Great article. This whole right side of history argument sounds good at a superficial level but looks to remove any nuance from situations and categorise everything as good or bad. It’s also ridiculous to look back (as people are currently doing to “cancel” historical figures) without considering the context at the time and trying to apply todays standards retrospectively.
All this mindless tribalism is exactly how awful decisions are made and manage to avoid scrutiny.
Isn't it ridiculous that destroying the reputations of the living isn't enough for the sanctimonious hypocrites. They must degrade the dead's reputations, too.
I read an article that Louisa May Alcott was trans.
I made this comment on another thefp this morning:
Right, haven't you heard that Joan of Arc and Queen Elizabeth I were both "trans"? I'm thinking it might have been more like 6-7 years ago now that my daughter's friend was giving her one of these lectures. She liked to sound smart and fancied herself a leader. I thought it was mostly silly childish nonsense but tried to inject some reason by saying that when I was a very young woman I could remember sometimes catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror and being struck by how delicate my face and form looked in contrast to how strong and large I felt in spirit. The girl told me this meant I "was trans"! Wow, such an exciting discovery. Everything in this cosmology points to a person "being trans" but this is meaningless and religious. The whole thing has jumped far from the idea that a very small group of mostly men have a psychological disorder or dysphoria which might be "dealt with medically" as a last resort.
I had no idea back then this thing was so viral. It's been in the universities for some time and has jumped out into everything. So many take advantage of it for politics, making money off surgeries and hanging plaques as "gender therapists" (you could be one, it's easy - just tell everyone who comes in that anything they say or complain about means they "are trans" and that changing their identities and taking harmful hormones will fix everything). People are making $$$ off this in pharma, as a DEI/DIE grifters at a schools or businesses. Many become self important "leaders" or allies (a dirty word to me now) in these school Alliance groups. Tech, media, and government are all on the wagon. Most "conservatives" or "Republicans" chose not to disagree as they will be labeled haters as "El Monstro" told me I am down below somewhere. But, when did we decide that "support" meant to agree with delusion?
Don’t trust Big Pharma in all this…that Covid gravy train ain’t gonna last forever
New revenue stream
Apparently - according to reports - so were Joan of Arc and Queen Elizabeth I - also, any high school or college girl who feels strong inside or wants to feel powerful about herself.
I heard about that somewhere. I have yet to read the article. Pure insanity.
Louisa May Alcott?
Yes. I edited my comment to correct it. Because she did not embrace "traditional" feminine goals.
I am sure Joan of Arc will be next.
I’ve heard claims that Joan, Queen Elizabeth I and others were trans, basically all important womxn throughout history were trans.
Not sure that’s a very feministic pov
There’s already a play about Joan of Arc, currently playing in London, that makes that claim
Well he'll. I guess I am too and did not even know it. 'Cause I think for myself.
I hope it's not an adaptation of Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan".
"They" are digging for anything to twist into their narrative to push the concept that the gender brand is natural.
The supreme irony is that without the historical figures that the Woke want to Cancel (like Jefferson and Washington), they would not have the freedom to do their Cancelling.
They are so misguided.
They are evil. It needs to be said plainly.
Spot on.
“The right side of history” is a fictitious concept made by people whose historical knowledge goes back to WW2.
The younger kids I speak with don’t know who attacked on 9/11 much less why. And if I tell them they immediately get defensive explaining, quite condescendingly, that Islam is peace. So it isn’t just not knowing, or is what else was shoved into their heads.
Doesnt "Islam" translate literally as "submission"?
Yes. Islam means submission. Of course in Semitic languages the consonants are the root of the word, so Islam (submission) and Salam (peace) have the same root. When a non-Muslim tells you that Islam is "a religion of peace" he or she is deluded. But curiously, when a Muslim makes the same statement, it is not a lie, rather it betrays the defective Islamic concept of peace, in which the only peace is that of submission, the peace between conqueror and conquered.
I see it as part threat: not only are we going to cancel you now, but also in the future.
Good point. It is the sanctimony of believing one can create Heaven on Earth. If only we can eliminate those rubes.
It is what happens when you are godless and don't believe there is a heaven or hell. I thought the writer acknowledged beautifully that "Progressivism" is a replacement for religious faith, i.e. a cult.
Utopia is only one more execution away....
No, it's older than that. Both Hegel and Marx had such a notion.
Their historical knowledge doesn't even go back to 2022. They make it all up as they go, as this author did in a number of instances.
First-Never start anything with Bernie Sanders a grifter, communist, and power hungry, angry old lizard.
Second-Progressives have been vocal for starting conflict and then abandoning people’s to rubble, death, and destruction. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. Don’t tell me about Bush. A Rhino world order guy, friends with Clinton and Obama. When convenient they will abandon Ukraine. Hell they can’t even protect America.
Progressives see themselves as saviors but in reality all they are is a Locust swarm that destroys and leaves ruins in their path.
Forget history for a bit. How about just doing what’s right for the American people and our countries stability? People just want decent education, law and order, a job to support their families or themselves. Put the shit head progressive’s all on an island and they will starve to death. They wouldn’t be able to agree what needs to be done.
Thanks for cutting through all the dross and calling bs on this nitwit.
….. shit head ….., you are being too kind.
Seriously.
but...but...their intentions are always so good....
Thanks for framing this in a logical way based on reality.