Useful Fools

Why am I not surprised at these oh-so-mature Lefties' reactions?

We who appreciated Reagan, both as a president and as a man, will simply have to grit our teeth and pass on. He's in better hands than ours now, and that is as it must be.

Rest in peace, Mr. President.

It's impossible to gauge my loathing for individuals like Kos and the DU-PES. It's a serious mental defect to be talking tinfoil when Reagan's body is barely vacated. God Bless Ronald Reagan.

I am grieving the loss of a great man, a man of integrity, compassion, humor...He is among the greatest of men, greatest of leaders, greatest of statesmen of the 20th century.

I am appalled at the lack of respect of the 'left', although I should not be surprised. If they did not respect the man, can they not at least respect the grief of a nation that loved him? His death is not a political event, nor a political opportunity. Can the left not shut up for a decent period and let us grieve in peace? That may be too much for them. As filled with hate and other putrid substances as they are, they might explode if they could not emote.

Good bye, Mr. President.

My hope is that these cretins will not be able to contain their hatred enough to shut up about Regan during the period of mourning. I'd like the country to get a good long look at these scumbags, and hear what they really think.

God bless President Ronald Reagan for having been the man to step forward when America need him the most.

May he now rest in peace!

John,

Check out phxnews.com to read what other tripe is being spewed by our very own state. It's not very nice. Just indicates that even great men after their passing, suffer the slings and bolts of the ignorant and unwilling to learn.

Reagan forced the left to acknowledge the bankruptcy of their philosophy and the inability of communism to satisfy even the minimum of people's needs. Reagan said "Show me" and their pathetic, shriveled pecker of a philosophy rinsed away with the soap.

Leave it to the Left to pontificate Wellstone, but trash Reagan. I mean afterall, THEY are the compassionate ones, aren't they?

Wait til Jimmy Carter dies and then see what the Left has to patch together to try to elevate what was an otherwise abject failure!

This is the man, Ronald Reagan that ended the cold war, virtually whipped the Soviet Union single handedly, and Jimmy Carter got the Nobel peace prize ? What did Carter ever do that even comes close to what president Reagan accomplished ?
The answer NOTHING, yet these willing maggots in the press and europe chose carter, what a sham.

Mark

What do you expect? He destroyed their idol: the USSR. What's left for them?

And from Juan Cole, www.juancole.com:

"Reagan had an ability to project a kindly image, and was well liked personally by virtually everyone who knew him, apparently. But it always struck me that he was a mean man. I remember learning, in the late 1960s, of the impact Michael Harrington's The Other America had had on Johnson's War on Poverty. Harrington demonstrated that in the early 1960s there was still hunger in places like Appalachia, deriving from poverty. It was hard for middle class Americans to believe, and Lyndon Johnson, who represented many poor people himself, was galvanized to take action.

I remember seeing a tape of Reagan speaking in California from that era. He said that he had heard that some asserted there was hunger in America. He said it sarcastically. He said, "Sure there is; they're dieting!" or words to that effect. This handsome Hollywood millionnaire making fun of people so poor they sometimes went to bed hungry seemed to me monstrous. I remember his wealthy audience of suburbanites going wild with laughter and applause. I am still not entirely sure what was going on there. Did they think Harrington's and similar studies were lies? Did they blame the poor for being poor, and resent demands on them in the form of a few tax dollars, to address their hunger?

Then when he was president, at one point Reagan tried to cut federal funding for school lunches for the poor. He tried to have ketchup reclassified as a vegetable to save money. Senator Heinz gave a speech against this move. He said that ketchup is a condiment, not a vegetable, and that he should know.

The meanness was reflected, as many readers have noted, in Reagan's "blame the victim" approach to the AIDS crisis. His inability to come to terms with the horrible human tragedy here, or with the emerging science on it, made his health policies ineffective and even destructive.

Reagan's mania to abolish social security was of a piece with this kind of sentiment. In the early 20th century, the old were the poorest sector of the American population. The horrors of old age--increasing sickness, loss of faculties, marginalization and ultimately death--were in that era accompanied by fear of severe poverty. Social security turned that around. The elderly are no longer generally poverty-stricken. The government can do something significant to improve people's lives. Reagan, philosophically speaking, hated the idea of state-directed redistribution of societal wealth. (His practical policies often resulted in such redistribution de facto, usually that of tossing money to the already wealthy). So he wanted to abolish social security and throw us all back into poverty in old age.

Reagan hated any social arrangement that empowered the poor and the weak. He was a hired gun for big corporations in the late 1950s, when he went around arguing against unionization. Among his achievements in office was to break the air traffic controllers' union. It was not important in and of itself, but it was a symbol of his determination that the powerless would not be allowed to organize to get a better deal. He ruined a lot of lives. I doubt he made us safer in the air.

Reagan hated environmentalism. His administration was not so mendacious as to deny the problems of increased ultraviolet radition (from a depleted ozone layer) and global warming. His government suggested people wear sunglasses and hats in response. At one point Reagan suggested that trees cause pollution. He was not completely wrong (natural processes can cause pollution), but his purpose in making the statement seems to have been that we should therefore just accept lung cancer from bad city air, which was caused by automobiles and industry, not by trees.

In foreign policy, Reagan abandoned containment of the Soviet Union as a goal and adopted a policy of active roll-back. Since the Soviet Union was already on its last legs and was not a system that could have survived long, Reagan's global aggressiveness was simply unnecessary. The argument that Reagan's increases in military funding bankrupted the Soviets by forcing them to try to keep up is simply wrong. Soviet defense spending was flat in the 1980s.

Reagan's aggression led him to shape our world in most unfortunate ways. Although it would be an exaggeration to say that Ronald Reagan created al-Qaeda, it would not be a vast exaggeration. The Carter administration began the policy of supporting the radical Muslim holy warriors in Afghanistan who were waging an insurgency against the Soviets after their invasion of that country. But Carter only threw a few tens of millions of dollars at them. By the mid-1980s, Reagan was giving the holy warriors half a billion dollars a year. His officials strong-armed the Saudis into matching the US contribution, so that Saudi Intelligence chief Faisal al-Turki turned to Usamah Bin Laden to funnel the money to the Afghans. This sort of thing was certainly done in coordination with the Reagan administration. Even the Pakistanis thought that Reagan was a wild man, and balked at giving the holy warriors ever more powerful weapons. Reagan sent Orrin Hatch to Beijing to try to talk the Chinese into pressuring the Pakistanis to allow the holy warriors to receive stingers and other sophisticated ordnance. The Pakistanis ultimately relented, even though they knew there was a severe danger that the holy warriors would eventually morph into a security threat in their own right.

Reagan's officials so hated the Sandinista populists in Nicaragua that they shredded the constitution. Congress cut off money for the rightwing death squads fighting the Sandinistas. Reagan's people therefore needed funds to continue to run the rightwing insurgency. They came up with a complicated plan of stealing Pentagon equipment, shipping it to Khomeini in Iran, illegally taking payment from Iran for the weaponry, and then giving the money to the rightwing guerrillas in Central America. At the same time, they pressured Khomeini to get US hostages in Lebanon, taken by radical Shiites there, released. It was a criminal cartel inside the US government, and Reagan allowed it, either through collusion or inattention. It is not a shining legacy, to have helped Khomeini and then used the money he gave them to support highly unsavory forces in Central America. (Some of those forces were involved after all in killing leftwing nuns).

Although Reagan's people were willing to shore up Iranian defenses during the Iran-Iraq War, so as to prevent a total Iraqi victory, they also wanted to stop Iran from taking over Iraq. They therefore winked at Saddam's use of chemical weapons. Reagan's secretary of state, George Schultz, sent Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad twice, the second time with an explicit secret message that the US did not really mind if Saddam gassed the Iranian troops, whatever it said publicly.

I only saw Reagan once in person. I was invited to a State Department conference on religious freedom, I think in 1986. It was presided over by Elliot Abrams, whom I met then for the first time. We were taken to hear Reagan speak on religious freedom. It was a cause I could support, but I came away strangely dissatisfied. I had a sense that "religious freedom" was being used as a stick to beat those regimes the Reagan administration did not like. It wasn't as though the plight of the Moro Muslims in the Philippines was foremost on the agenda (come to think of it, perhaps no Muslims or Muslim groups were involved in the conference).

Reagan's policies thus bequeathed to us the major problems we now have in the world, including a militant Islamist International whose skills were honed in Afghanistan with Reagan's blessing and monetary support; and a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, which the Reagan administration in some cases actually encouraged behind the scenes for short-term policy reasons. His aggressive foreign policy orientation has been revived and expanded, making the US into a neocolonial power in the Middle East. Reagan's gutting of the unions and attempt to remove social supports for the poor and the middle class has contributed to the creation of an America where most people barely get by while government programs that could help create wealth are destroyed.

Reagan's later life was debilitated by Alzheimer's. I suppose he may already have had some symptoms while president, which might explain some of his memory lapses and odd statements, and occasional public lapses into woolly-mindedness. Ironically, Alzheimer's could be cured potentially by stem cell research. In the United States, where superstition reigns over reason, the religious Right that Reagan cultivated has put severe limits on such research. His best legacy may be Nancy Reagan's argument that those limitations should be removed in his memory. There are 4 million Alzheimers sufferers in the US, and 50% of persons living beyond the age of 85 develop it. There are going to be a lot of such persons among the Baby Boomers. By reversing Reaganism, we may be able to avoid his fate."

And from Joshua Green of the Washington Monthly, Reagan's Liberal Legacy

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0301.green.html

To those of you wanting gays to take partial responsibilty for AIDS deaths during Reagan's administration...fine. Now do me a favor and shut up until you can tell me and 1,000's more where you found he mentioned AIDS during his presidency in a public speech or where he committed any funds to discover anything about it or to offer funding to the AIDS cause. Once you do that, you can brag about how Nancy can't help but prevent her "husband's disease" from inflicting pain and sufffering on other family's. Til then, I will never mourn his passing.

"To those of you wanting gays to take partial responsibilty for AIDS deaths during Reagan's administration...fine. Now do me a favor and shut up until you can tell me and 1,000's more where you found he mentioned AIDS during his presidency in a public speech or where he committed any funds to discover anything about it or to offer funding to the AIDS cause."

Well, he never mentioned Blue Rubber Bleb Nevus syndrome, either, so that makes him responsible for it. He also never mentioned the common cold, so he's evil for not having cured it. And his deliberate omission of both typhoid and bubonic plague during all his years in office just proves his innate evil and lack of responsibility, is that about right?
AIDS is not a cause, or a lifestyle choice, or a trendy illness like consumption in the 19th century. It's a disease. 16,602 people reportedly died of AIDS in America in 1988. 40,368 died of diabetes in the same year. Is Reagan responsible for not during diabetes, too?

during = curing

I guess Reagan would have been ok with the left if he had said: "Dude, put a condom on that before you put it in a man's ass." But he didn't and we had to wait for Clinton to come along before AIDS was eradicated. But wait a minute, infection rates went up in the 1990s...damn that GW.

Palm Springs

You can start by bragging how the gay movement's refusal to allow normal public health procedures to be used resulted in millions of excess deaths. You can brag about how the widely encouraged hyper-promiscuity led to the spread of this disease, killing many innocents - people who did not intentionally engage in risky behavior, like hemophiliacs, injury victims requiring blood, and people undergoing surgery. You can explain how the gay movement prevented closing bathhouses during the epidemic, even when public health officials asked them to because they knew that gay bath houses were amplifying the spread of AIDS. You can explain why nobody in the gay community ever considered the possibility that anonymous anal sex with many people, carried on by a large segment of the gay community, would spread blood born pathogens. You can explain why, even when it was clear from the high rate of blood born pathogen disease among gays before HIV, they never stopped that behavior.

AIDS in the United States exploded into a huge problem before scientists had a chance to even discover its cause, because the gay community spread it so rapidly. Had they not done so, there would have been far fewer people in that community and outside of it dying of the disease, because scientists would have been able to show it was a viral blood born pathogen, and recommend common sense safety measures such as condoms.

The gay community, as a political movement and in the lifestyle of too many of its members, was directly and irrefutably responsible for the holocaust of AIDS in the United States. That isn't a political statement, but a scientific one.

Until I hear the gay community acknowledge its own responsibility in bringing the disease into the United States and amplifying it dramatically through voluntary actions, while at the same time preventing the government health officials (including the CDC under Ronald Reagan) from using normal procedures for containing and investigating disease outbreaks, I have not the slightest interests in whines trying to blame the consequences of their behavior on Ronald Reagan, a man of compassion with gay friends of his own.

As to the stem cell issue and Alzheimer's, I know more about that than Nancy Reagan ever will, and I will tell you right now that Bush's (NOT REAGAN's) actions are not hindering that research.

Oh, and by the way, I watched my own mother die a horrible death from an Alzheimer's related disease (Lewy Body Disease), so don't lecture me about this.

I suggest you read "And The Band Played On" by Randy Shiltz to lean the facts about AIDS in the United States. He was a gay reporter in San Francisco who, sadly, has since died of AIDS.

Then, rather than slandering a great man at his death, you should publicly apologize to the millions of people in the world who now have AIDS as a result of the irresponsible behavior of gay activists and many in the community.

John Moore
It seems you are pleased with yourself that you can pin all the blame of the AIDS epidemic on gays themselves.

To me this is a despicably convenient way to ignore AIDS all together as a disease which eradicates a set of people you clearly dislike.

What's worse is that you slander an entire community as well as thousands who have died and suffer from AIDS and it's okay! But someone slanders one man who was in a position that should be questioned (as any President should) and you go nuts.

Are your morals upside down?

Let's not blame gays or Reagan or the scientific community for AIDS. I think that the government did not do enough early on but that was everyone in government. I also don't think the gay community did enough early on either - but it's pretty easy to see in American that communities rarely come together in such strong economic, social and political ways to cure their ills. That's why we have a government.

Matt66

I am not slandering a community. I am speaking facts about a movement. Not every gay is promiscuous, and wasn't then. Those in the gay movement who fought the closing of bathhouses, who made HIV infection a super secret when other, less deadly diseases were reportable and contract traced, and who literally promoted an ideology of frequent sexual partners are the primary cause of the rapid spread of AIDS.

You can wiggle and squirm and try to psychoanalyze my motives all you want, but it does not absolve those people. They are no deader than Ronald Reagan, and yet their representatives are today, on my blog, slandering Reagan.

You think I clearly dislike gays. That is not true. Of the gay people I have known, there is only one I dislike, and that is not related to his sexual preference. So take your pseudo-psychology elsewhere, it ain't going to sell here where we deal in truths.

As I said, gay community slanders of Ronald Reagan are being made by the same group that holds the greatest responsibility for the AIDS epidemic, a group which has never apologized for deaths of millions of people who, unlike the gays, did not choose to take the risk of multiple sexual partners. Until they apologize, I am not sympathetic to the movement - they are a bunch of hypocrits who, through their collective policies, murdered more people than Saddam Hussein, including a good friend of mine who was gay.

But to individual gays suffering from AIDS, my heart goes out. Nobody should have to suffer that disease. My daughter worked at an AIDS hospice and also in a lab doing AIDS research. We are not heartless.

Government may not have had an optimal response (when does it ever?), but the gay community - the activists - actively obstructed the government's work. CDC and a number of other doctors were working hard on a disease caused by the most intractible and mysterious virus ever discovered - HIV has a mutation rate higher than any other deadly human pathogen, and yet has a long latency before it acts. Understanding this disease was not an issue of money - it was an issue of scientific detective work. The work continues.

By the way, Reagan authorized a lot of funding in 1985 on AIDS, far more than on other diseases that were killing a lot more people.

Finally, you say "That's why we have a government.

To protect people from the predictably dangerous outcomes of their own bad judgement? That's why we have a government?

Not in my book.

In any case, the gay activists have for 20 years been heaping large amounts of blame on Reagan (who had some other more important issues on his table - remember, AIDS was not a big epidemic for quite a while, because of HIV latency). They do it without accepting any for themselves.

When I see that, I respond with reality: the gay activists and many gays themselves are responsible for the AIDS holocaust in the United States. The Index Case in the US was a very promiscuous homosexual Airline steward. That's where the disease came into the country from. It spread only in the gay community for a long time. It spread because of their voluntary actions which were obviously unsafe from an Infectious Disease standpoint, but were promoted as a new lifestyle by gay activists. The actively fought efforts by alarmed public health officials.

Those who fought public health measure are mass murderers, of homosexuals and others. Got it?

To protect people from the predictably dangerous outcomes of their own bad judgement? That's why we have a government?
Not in my book.

This is where we differ.
You have a libertarian take on this, which I respect but which assumes people are smart enough to know better.
Sometimes this just isn't the case.

I think I'm a bit puzzled over the gay community bit. Sure promiscuity was rampant but are you saying the gay community willingly ignored the AIDS threat just to continue having fun? That's too much.

I think ultimately we are talking about denial. Yes there was some denial in the 'gay community' about AIDS. But there too was denial in the entire Unites States about homosexuality and AIDS in the first place. Being gay was one stigma. Having AIDS and being gay was another.

And in fact many believed infected gays deserved their horrible fate. And Reagan certainly didn't put in on the front burner. (Actually Nancy spoke about it more).

Anyway, let's not rewrite history and make Reagan a champion of homosexuality and AIDS research funding. But people should not slander Reagan either. It accomplishes nothing.

Yes, I do have a bit of a libertarian bent here. And what do you think the gay community would have done had the government been on the ball?

The government *was* on the ball, and were vilified as "homophobes" (an idiotic word, by the way) for their public health selections. Again, you just can't remove the blame from the community.

Now it is true that people might not be worried about the consequences at that time. It appeared that deadly diseases were curable (because of antibiotics), and gays for the first time were free to engage in their social and sexual activities. But ultimately it was the gay activists who kept the epidemic from being controlled early enough to do any good.

As to denial in the entire United States, would you care to explain what you mean? There was a gay plague. Everyone knew that. How it was caused was not well understood. It was presumed to be a viral STD, but that was not obvious until HIV was discovered. So what denial are we talking about?

There was certainly a feeling that heterosexuals were at little risk. That feeling happened to be correct, although the gay activists, in an attempt to normalize their behavior, was able to scare many people unnecessarily. The projections of a spread to the heterosexual community, which were very alarming, were wrong. AIDS in the US is still primarily a disease of homosexual males and IV drug users.

In Africa and Asia, it is a disease of heterosexuals, and one of the mysteries of AIDS is why that is so.

Reagan, properly so, was not a champion of either homosexuality or AIDS. He had more important issues to deal with than hedonism and a disease that, at the time, was not known well enough to predict the international disaster that was coming. Furthermore, he wsa under vicious attack at the time for his foreign policies, and was in the process of destroying one of the most evil regimes in the world.

But those who slander Reagan on this are going to be met with the truth, which is that the gay activists are the most to blame, and individual gays were also at fault because of their promiscuity.

It apparently didn't occur to people that moral values about promiscuity might have been a natural result of the dangers of that activity. It might not have occurred to me at that time, but if I heard what the public health experts were saying, I certianly would have paid attention. The '70s and early '80s were times of denial of any morality - the condemnation of moral judgement, the condemnation of tradition, and general all out rebellion against social norms.

That is dangerous, if one doesn't consider where the values came from. It's no different than the prohibitions on eating pork in some religions - a commandment that has true survival value. This is why conservativism, which advocates understanding of traditions and change only in a relatively slow and well deliberated manner, is a rational viewpoint.

I certainly consider those leaders of the gay communities to have been responsible for the deaths of millions through their strong political actions preventing rational and normal epidemic control. History is clear on that. All you have to do is read it, or remember the controversies of the time. Even today, HIV status is special compared to other diseases, even though HIV is now a minor killer in the US compared to other factors.

The hatred of Reagan that has come from the gay community in the last few days shows unacceptable ignorance and failure to take responsibility for that community's action. It is disgusting behavior by irresponsible people unwilling to be held responsible for what they did.

I heard just this morning, via radio and TV, that gay demonstrators vow to 'be on hand,' or to 'make their presence felt,' at President Reagan's upcoming funeral.

On various occasions, I desperately wanted to punch Bill Clinton in the mouth, but on the day he dies, I certainly won't be foolish enough--let alone, insensitive enough--to 'celebrate' his earthly demise. On the contrary, I'll allow the man to pass in peace, in the same manner in which all deserve.

Gay groups, staunch and shrill in their ongoing desire for 'acceptance' (witness: the illegal and headstrong attempt at 'sanctification' of gay 'marriage' by select federal officials; gays' casting of pigs' blood on priests; and the increasing rancor of leading gay organizations) are further widening the already-goliath chasm existing between gay and straight, and appear bound-and-determined to commit social, cultural, and political suicide.

So much, then, for 'peace,' 'tolerance,' 'acceptance,' and 'good will.' Smoke and mirrors, as some like to say.

If we don't bring you down from without, we'll witness your fall from within--or so a crimson-faced, rotund Soviet premier once angrily predicted.

Matt66 wrote:

>>>>And in fact many believed infected gays deserved their horrible fate. And Reagan certainly didn't put in on the front burner. (Actually Nancy spoke about it more).

Anyway, let's not rewrite history and make Reagan a champion of homosexuality and AIDS research funding. But people should not slander Reagan either. It accomplishes nothing.
I keep hearing how the 'gay community ' should share some of the responsibility, I have a problem with the word 'Some'. We keep getting the Homosexual lifestyle shoved down our throats as if there was some semblence of normalcy to it, when there is none. Should they have equal rights ? Absolutely, Do two people of the same sex constitute a marriage ? Absolutely not. But today, instead of the people making the laws, the elitist judges are making them to conform to their own perverted image of what America should be.
This is what happens when deviant behavior is defined down.
Nobody is trying to re-write history, but since you have admitted even a small amount of 'blame' for the gay-community where is there share to help pay for AIDS research. The federal government is us , we the people, but yet are expected to blindly shell out billions of dollars, while nothing is done to prevent it on the causal end.
But the first thing we hear when RR dies is he didnt do enough for AIDS research, What about Carter, the really 'do-nothing president' and last but certainly not least how about carping to BJ Clinton he was in there for 8 long, exasperating, do-nothing years, never do i hear any blame accorded to the fake Nobel prize winner nor to the Felon and his bride.

Mark

Mark

Carter isn't heard about because AIDS wasn't known during his term. Interestingly, HIV first moved into humans around 1930. The first case was recognized and reported in the United States in 1980.

In North America, the disease first appeared in the early 1980s when "young gay men in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York were developing rare forms of cancer and unusual lung infections" (Canada's Blueprint:12), all diseases signalling a serious weakening of immune function. "At the end of 1981, this new disease had a name"

I say blame lays with some parts of the gay community because it is promiscuity, not homosexuality per say, that caused the explosive spread of AIDS. And the gay community was literally celebrating and encouraging frequent anonymous sex.

From Origina and Spread of HIV (emphasis added):

During the 1970-80 there was a changes in sexual lifestyle paraticularly amongst
homosesxuals in the USA and the dramatic development of the "Gay" movement. This
movement encompassed political, economic and sexual aims. When combined with the
mobility of the population the scene was set for transmission of a number of infectious
diseases. For instance between 1969-74 some 30,000 gays moved to San Francisco.

The Gay sexual scene was characterised by

• an increased frequency of sexual encounters
• epidemics of traditional STD's
• increasing commercialisation of sex (via bath houses and sex clubs)
• appearanced of some new diseases such as Gay Bowel Disease and an upurge
  of Hepatitis B.

On average individuals had 2-3 sexual contacts/night

The relatively low efficiency of transmission of HIV and the need for close physical contact would have made rapid transmission initially difficult. However the important social changes previously described that have allowed rapid mixing of populations - air travel, urbanisation the loosening of family ties, changes in sexual behaviour and the upsurge of IDU - have all combined to ease the spread of this virus.

AIDS is not highly contagious as diseases go. It would not be a major epidemic without a significant amount of promiscuity (and IV drug use) - it would die out. Of any kind of sex, anal sex is the most efficient way to spread it - at least in Pattern I countries.

Pattern II countries (mostly Africa) see it predominantly in heterosexuals, although evidence indicates that the number of infections has been overestimated. There are a number of theories as to the reason for the high rates in heterosexuals in Pattern II countries - too many to be examined here. Again, high levels of promiscuity are necessary for the continuance of the epidemic.

Finally, there are two major types of the agent causing AIDS: HIV-1 - the most common in the US, and HIV-2 - most common in Africa.

Any way you look at it, the greatest culpability for the AIDS epidemic in the US is clearly with those who advocated frequent anonymous sex and those who practiced it, and to a lesser extent, those who practiced IV drug use. If Reagan is allocated a blame level of 1, those groups deserve a blame level of 100.

a disease that, at the time, was not known well enough to predict the international disaster that was coming.

Hmmmm, so how was the gay comunity suppose to know?

It apparently didn't occur to people that moral values about promiscuity might have been a natural result of the dangers of that activity. The '70s and early '80s were times of denial of any morality - the condemnation of moral judgement, the condemnation of tradition, and general all out rebellion against social norms.

Ow Gawd you're getting silly. What next? The fall of the Roman Empire came about because of gays? Yes, society's norms were challenged but your sentiment is hedging a wee bit too close to Jerry Falwell and his group for me. Did they deserve death because of their immoral crimes? Do Republicans who commit such heinous crimes - like adultry - get punished too?

This is why conservativism, which advocates understanding of traditions and change only in a relatively slow and well deliberated manner, is a rational viewpoint.

Yeah, the black community should have waited another twenty years for civil rights.
What are you talking about?

When I mention denial I meant the denial of the fact that gays exist in America. Remember until just recently it was a BIG deal to come out of the closet. It was also a BIG deal for America to admit that gays were not just living in San Francisco and other 'sinful cities'. No, gays were everywhere. Even in small town America.
And so, yes, AIDS is upon us and upon those 'immoral Africans' - as you might say - so let's stop laying blame and find a way to cure it.
What do you say?

It seems that criticism of Reagan is being dismissed by the twin accusations of 1)lack of humanity- bad timing or 2)being in love with the USSR or anti-american. Those are sloppy grounds for dismissal in this dialogue of the deaf. If you are to counter the anti-Reagan arguments, I would hope for more than the assertion that he put on his cape and defeated the Evil Empire with his charisma gun. The tactics used were the same as with Cuba blockade or trade restrictions and, if that fails, outspend them via the glorious con of Star Wars- another real life/ movie crossover.

The arguments against his sainthood are, in no particular order:-
he was the lazy affable front guy for a bunch of crooks right from his time with the Screen Actors Guild;
he espoused a so-called christian morality on sexual matters which he and his wife signally failed to live up to during their time in Hollywood;
he dodged the war for which he was eligible;
he lied to the american public with impunity- I will not accept any Alzheimer's arguments for his inclusion of film events in his fantasy life story;
he backed the nun-raping Contras- being anti-communist is not a sufficient argument, so are Al Qaeda;
he had Olly North rip up evidence of his Iran dealings to undermine Carter and prolong the hostage status of US citizens;
he backed Saddam as a bulwark against Iran;
Clint Eastwood could not make Grenada anything other than a tawdry piece of needless bullying;
Reaganomics was voodoo economics -leaving your debt to your children and the Trickle Down theory led directly to Leonie Helmsley's "taxes are for the little people" jibe.

I do not assert that Reagan is anywhere near the status of Stalin, Hitler or Pol Pot but he is right up there with U.S. Grant and Calvin Coolidge as a front guy stooge for moneyed interests. No amount of snow job can cover history's tracks here. Many of us remember what actually happened not how Murdoch would like it presented. These are not anti-american views - I genuinely admire many of the can-do, volunteering and civic virtues of the USA, especially where left-minded people look out for the less fortunate in their communities as opposed to the charity giving only by photo op of our "celebrated" philanthropists. John Dos Passos said that the great success of American Capitalism was to make the poor ashamed of themselves. After that all you need is an Uncle Ronnie to give you a new group to kick to make you feel better- communists, blacks, gays, immigrants, non-christians- anyone who stands up against us can be demonized. Not very saintly, eh?

[FROM BLOGMASTER: The only reason I allow this nonsense in here is this article is to show how much the left hates and distorts the Reagan legacy, even before the man is buried, and in general how full of hatred they are. Tony's post is a fine example of that. Some of the charges are simply lefty interpretations of real events (explain, you dummy, why the people the Contras fought lost it the first fair election they were forced to hold under international scrutiny).

Most of the charges listed above are pure slander - untrue but popular myths the left needs in order to sustain their hatred of the American who did more than any other person to tear down the shrine of the left - the USSR. But of course, today they deny that they supported the USSR by supporting its policies, even though history records that they have yet to even criticise the butchers that made up that regime, instead saving their venom for those in the United States who fought for democracy and freedom.

The rest of the charges are out of context.

However, a few deserve answering. The rest are too absurd.

Naturally the first implies that he was stupid - this is the first thought that pops into the fevered brain of any leftist when considering Reagan. This was believed by the left for many years. Which is ironic, because if he was so dumb, why did he blow you guys away? Remember 1984 and him winning 49 states? And he defeated an imperialist nation your writers said could not be defeated; Clinton's chief advisor on foreign affairs (Strobe Talbot), a leftist Soviet "expert" said during the time that the GDP of the USSR would pass our own by 1990. So this dumb guy beat the pants off of you and the mighty USSR. Right.

The truth is that Reagan's papers show that he wrote his own speeches before he was president - brilliant speeches that he gave on his radio show - hand written with almost no corrections. Those who actually worked with him during his presidency know of his intelligence. You guys just fell for one of your standard lines - that Conservatives are stupid - which is one reason he was able to defeat you over and over and over again. He was on top of important issues and he understood the world better than the left ever will.

"he dodged the war for which he was eligible" - no, he served in the Army Reserve (enlisted April 29, 1937, ordered to active duty on 19 April 1942, was classified for limited service only due to eyesight difficulties. He served in logistics at Fort Mason, California, and at Army Air Force request, was transfered to the Army Air Force on 9 June 1942, where he was assigned to public relations and the 1st Motion Picture Unit in Culver City, CA. In 1944, he was ordered to TDY in New York City for a War Loan Drive, and was then assigned to the 18th Army Air Force Base Unit, Culver City, CA where he remained until the end of the war. While on active duty he was promoted to Captain, and served as Personnel Officer, Post Adjutant, and Executive Officer. His units produced 400 training films for the Army Air Force. He was discharged from the reservers on April 1, 1953, hence having served for 16 years. Source. I include this particular item to show how the left is willing to slander using lies.

And who the hell are you to talk about dodging the war? Did you ever do anything for your country? Were you marching in anti-war marches when I was in Vietnam, or were you still in diapers? For that matter, are you still in diapers?

"Reaganomics was voodoo economics" - leftists are clueless about economics. The record shows how idiotic this charge is.

And, of course, the implication that conservatives need to kick around a group to feel better says far more about the left than the right. After all, here is an example of the left kicking around a man dead but not yet buried, telling lies about him and showing their ignorance of the man's essential brilliance and humanity.

Communism is almost completely on the ash heap of history, except in two brutal regimes, both supported by the left: Cuba and Vietnam. In fact, the left insured that the latter became communist against the will of the population of the South.

I don't expect better of the left. They are embittered individuals living with a cognitive dissonance that they cannot resolve without also losing their beloved Marxist-based ideology, an ideology distinguished in history for killing more people than any other - between 65,000,000 and 100,000,000. I know a number of recovered leftists, and they speak of the moment when they realized their whole philosophy was built on lies.

The bankrupcy of the left was shown by the excuses they made and still make about the regimes which did all of that killing. It is shown by their worship of Michael Gorbachev, the man whom the "stupid" Reagan defeated, a man who during his time in power waged for 3 years a horribly brutal war against Afghanistan, a man who during his time in power employed 25,000,000 people and $1 billion per year to build the most deadly biological weapons program in the history of man - one which targeted every American city with five biological weapons, designed to be delivered after a nuclear attack - weapons including antibiotic resistant plague and anthrax, smallpox, and others.

One of the more interesting things about postings by the left in general is the level of hatred in the posts, and the constant belief that the right is the font of hatred - that we hate anyone unlike ourselves, that we need someone to oppress. Guess what... that's utter nonsense, left over from old communist and Marxist theories from the '50s. But your words speak for themselves. You show hate. We show reason. I'll let readers judge.

But go on, leftists... continue to vent your hatred and show your inhumanity by attack this great man before he is buried. It's your last chance, after all. History will treat Reagan a lot better than it will treat your cause, once the draft dodger boomer professors retire.

"I do not assert that Reagan is anywhere near the status of Stalin, Hitler, or Pol Pot but he is right up there with U.S. Grant and Calvin Coolidge as a front guy stooge for moneyed interests...." ('Tony')

Well, Tony--conversely, I'd never say that John Kerry is anywhere near the stature of John Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, James Fisk, or Jay Gould, but I'd still say that he's pretty durned wealthy, wouldn't you? And I'd similarly submit that your Dos Passos quote rather applies to Kerry as well, no?

Odd it is you (Democrats) profess to loathe those who 'defend' the rich--Reagan, as you say, in this instance--but you rather hypocritically adore the rich themselves (witness the Kennedys, Ted Turner, Jane Fonda, liberal Hollywood, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Rather, Brokaw, Jennings, Trudeau, Pauley, etc.), provided, that is, they're in league with your political philosophy.

An anecdote--admittedly, perhaps apocryphal--goes that when informed of Calvin Coolidge's legendary taciturnity, a gregarious young D.C. debutante boasted, "If I could meet the man, I'd make him talk!" Replied the woman's friend, "No, but I'm afraid it's true--from what I've heard about the President, you'll never get more than two words out of him." Thus upon her introduction to Coolidge, the woman offered, "Mr. President, I've been told that I won't get more than two words out of you--but I do believe I can, don't you think? What have you got to say about it, sir?"
Without batting an eye, Coolidge coolly replied, "You lose!"

And I'm afraid you've lost, too, Tony.

Tony:

John Dos Passos said a lot of things, but if I were you I wouldn't enlist him in your causes. For one reason, he is an almost forgotten writer, you don't impress anyone with your arcane knowledge, and Dos Passos is hardly the last word in social thinking.

Morever, he would have rejected practically all the primitivist and reflexive nonsense that we find in your post. He rejected, in the end, the "progressive" thinking you so adore. He was a thinker, you're a follower. If there's a Lefty cliche missing here, I can't find it.

Why don't you come back with something from Norman Mailer or Lawrence Ferlinghetti? They're much more interesting and you can impress us with you American Lit credentials. Maybe you can stun us with your knowledge of the Angry Young Men, too.

In your unattainable aspiration for seriousness, there is one thing that shines through your post, and every other post like it. Arrogance, stupidity, a portentousness that goes nowhere, self-satisfaction, a vapid and directionless morality and that strange density in Leftist thinking. A good comparison is "pointillism without a point". Code words, knee-jerk, pseudo-intellectualism, and, finally, the hollow peity of all of your kind. Our political system consistently rejects people with your views. Over and over, and that is a good thing.

Robert:

Mother of God!! I reversed the "i" and the "e" in "piety". What am I gonna do, man? It's all over for me...

There is one thing I would like to add in comment to the boilerplate fatuity of Lefty Tony's post.

Among the silliness of it all is one little kernel of ugliness. Iran-Contra. This expression almost certainly appears in every Social Science Departments Little Red Book of approved cliches. And Tony, probably fresh out of college, isn't showing any dangerous signs of original thinking.

What is meant by "Iran Contra" is "Daniel Ortega". If the conditions surrounding Iran Contra were applied to a situation approved by The Left, all the "nun-raping" in the world wouldn't have mattered.

This is the most puzzling feature in The Left's Hall of Prejudices. Why they are besotted by every sklimy little dictator decked out in new fatigues with a few lines from Marx, Mao and Lenin. I think in their need for vicarious thrills, they see themselves as Che or Daniel or Fidel, on the barricades, getting the chicks and wearing those cool olive drabs. Maybe they should have Spanish Civil War reenactments and be done with it.

You can't say this too much! For every slave with a jackboot on his neck, there's a Western Liberal saying that at least the slave is literate and has free health care.

Robert, Rhod(are you welsh? or just a unique speller with that h) and the wonderfully world weary Blogmaster,

In other circumstances, this could be described as fun, but you do appear to have a hero worship relation with the dead president so maybe I should be a bit more serious. I vented my feelings because of the Dianification of RR which I was witnessing. The same hysteria, the same emotional fascism, so out of all the sites in all the ww web, I stumbled into yours. I can forego any response to the kneejerk stuff- Democrat, commie lover etc; I am not an american but,hey, that does not make me a bad person. I am not anti-american- the Right always tries that line. You may own america financially but in no other sense. I am, therefore, not a Democrat or Kerry supporter. For what it's worth, my personal favourite as presidents were LBJ, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt because of the complexity of their characters and their willingness to fight against some of their own past baggage. As a former Democrat, you might think RR qualifies under this criteria but he sold out his past principles to Joe McCarthy, the Mob and anyone paying, basically. Not very noble?
The world's a complex place so being anti-RR is not being pro-soviet. I did not march against Vietnam but still think Kissinger was a war criminal in Cambodia and Laos. I fully support the US response in Afghanistan but not Iraq. Being anti-contra is not necessarily pro-Sandinista but, let's face it, there's a long and proven track record in S. America of undermining regimes and creating conditions which make it impossible to not vote a certain way. The citizens of the town in High Noon would have voted Gary Cooper out of Office if Kissinger had been in charge of the crew that arrived on the train. But we can dismiss that film-written by a commie- was it not?
Anyway enough about me and what I am not. If this dialogue of the deaf is to continue, maybe I should know the writers I am allowed to quote. How about another of my heroes, Mr. Koestler, a CIA funded leftist, supporter of Israel and serial rapist, yet he still wrote some great truths about politics and right/ left issues. Argue with me on anything I said. Not what you think I said or what others like me have said. The most tiresome form of argument to deal with is the construction..." if you mean by that (insert total travesty of argument),...then I am happy to be acused of (insert fine self-definition". Rhod, maybe I am too stupid to know we, whoever we are, lost. Fukuyama argued about the end of History but Marxist dialectics go on. It is possible to understand Marxist arguments without subscribing to communist governments. the left has more sects than the Protestant faith

[FROM BLOGMASTER (John Moore): Well, at least this guy isn't a complete fool. Yes, we have strong feelings about Ronald Reagan. He was one of the greatest Americans in history. We are mourning his loss and celebrating his life. It is unfortunate that you choose this time to slander his memory. You don't have to be a "commee" or whatever to have execrably bad manners and taste in slandering Reagan during his week of mourning.

Have fun, Rhod. At least this guy has relatively decent taste in presidents (except for LBJ, who was a vile and stupid man who had the greatest responsibility for the loss of the Vietnam War]

Tony:

I see we coaxed you to coherence. I am not Welsh, by the way. The "H" is also not an affectation, it was inserted by Scottish parents who found it normal in Rhoderick. I assume you're UK. I usually expect a Tony to have a hyphenated last name.

My response to your first post was as you deserved; your remarks were neither insightful, considered or worth reading, but the usual fatuous stuff from The Left, or New Labor, as it were. Maybe you thought you were dealing with the standard Yank Yob that you are always prepared to find here, so you reverted to type.

Your injured pride takes the usual form, which is to say that some Right Wing lunatic is accusing you of commie-loving because they disagree with you. I didn't even use the word, which proves something like reflexivity on your part and runs across the board in all your sympathies, none of which are anything less than predictable. However, if you haven't learned by now that The Left is instinctively sympathetic to Marxist tyrranies, then you just haven't been awake for the last fifty years.

I also did not refer to Ronald Reagan. I think he had a flawed presidency, but I find most of his "faults" to be sins only in the myth systems of The Left. And they all swirl around the core facts of your snobbishness, arrogance and sense of entitlement to power and to set the terms of the culture.

Your reference to John Dos Passos was, well, common, and a bit like a plastic rose on a squrrel carcass. It's still a dead squirrel. You're doing the same thing with Arthur Koestler and Frances(is?) Fukayama, flaying us with your erudition. You've read them; do you understand them? I responded with a few names hoping you would take the bait. You did.

Finally, it should be apparent to someone with your intellect that much of what you say is freighted with symbolism and indeterminate meanings. Kissinger. Joe McCarthy. Obscure side references to blacklisting via the drama High Noon. You just can't get away with this shit with people who listen to you.

Maybe in the common room and teacher's lounge, where there is a sea of nodding heads in front of you, or at a Move-On bake sale where everyone speaks the same pseudo-language...and no one knows what ANYTHING MEANS..but not here. You have to make sense, take a risk, drop the Lefty lexicon and have a real idea, rather than an incantation.

You sound a little wounded, but strangely elevated in your unresisting superiority over us Right Wing nuts. Well, you don't impress me at all. You seem like the standard posturing Lefty however much smarter you are than most, but still no challenge.

Tony:

I've had second thoughts. I find myself agreeing with you on certain points. You referred to Dianafication, and you've probably seen the hard copy of it at Harrods and elsewhere. With your jeweler's eye you probably see it everywhere in The West, and in that way you and I are alike. Emotionalism is the enemy of truth.

While I don't think Dianafication is happening with Ronald Reagan, there is always a danger of trivializing an event or a person with excessive sentimentality. This goes for 911 and D-Day and a lot of other things, and maybe this is what you mean by the creative expression "emotional fascism". Meaningless, but creative.

Sentimentality is what remains after genuine feeling is absent. Diana filled an emptiness in British pop culture, and her death never rose above the genre if you know what I mean. Her remembrance was a continuation of the thing that made her notable, the vapid and silly cult of celebrity. She just happened to be dead, which was just Diana being Diana in freeze-frame.

She differs from Reagan in this respect: If you discount the wilder elements among the anti-monarchy crowd, there was no criticism of Diana comparable to the criticisms aimed at Reagan over the years. Nothing as bitter, as senseless and vicious...and what you dislike in this "hero worship", as you call it, is the flip-side of your cynicism and skepticism.

Since I bring the same thing to most of what you believe, we have something in common.

"Spanish Civil War reenactments," Rhod? Good Lord, man--is it ever fun when you're here!

And, hey, why worry about our spelling...it's not as if "Johnny K's" with us anymore. Besides, we live by the 'three-strikes' rule here. (Geez, am I beginning to sound like a 'commee,' or what!)

Oh, and for the official record: I never voted for President Reagan. Until '92, I'd been a registered Democrat since '72. I spent my boyhood summers wandering around in Harry and Bess Truman's Independence, Missouri backyard (literally), while my carpenter-dad performed home repair for these folk. Hard to believe, as I look back, though, that I once voted for Mondale-Ferraro! (What was I thinking, anyway?)

Now. After some really tacky and self-serving name-dropping, my central point: I firmly believe that, whether you worship Reagan, or not, it's both utterly senseless and tasteless to waste time castigating the man even as he lies dead. And those who're doing so are like ocean waves pounding away on bedrock. In the end--like John Wilkes Booth--bitter, vindictive, perpetually-frustrated Dems' will most certainly stare at their hands and mumble to themselves, "Useless...useless."

(If you think Reagan really had a knack for making these people mad when he was alive and kicking--and I know what I'm talking about; I used to be one of 'em--you've got to truly marvel at how he can still infuriate 'em--even from the grave!)

Whatever Ronald Reagan was, he was certifiably cerebral--and you've got to admire that.

"Twenty-Mule Team Borax." (When's the last time you silently mouthed those words to yourself?)

"Lefties" can't down him too much because ALOT of their constituants (sp?) loved him as well. I ask them to remember the "Reagan Democrats".

Alot of people respected the man for good reason and I just hope that they will get their heads from out of their rears and show some respect.

THEY will never get that kind of love or admiration from anyone.

Robert:

Given enough time, even a vote for Mondale can be expunged from your record. Mondale was close enough to the periphery of the old Democratic Party of Truman, so a little overlap is understandable. Use enough Borax on that voting lever finger and you should come clean. If I had a Grant Wood (name-dropping) upbringing, I might be a Democrat too.

The Left's ever-renewing hatred for Reagan is puzzling, but I think if you read Tony's post, it is one Station of The Cross for them. The first is Joe McCarthy if you discount the rapacious capitalism that caused The Depression.

There are agonizing stops in Camelot and The Great Society, and on to the VN war and beyond, with a new one coming along all the time. You know the drill. Some enterprising Lefty art student should satirize these stops in a series of pastels.

Oh. This might be unfair to Tony, but it is important to point out that there is no "Protestant faith", nor are there "sects". Protestantism is a deviation from Roman Catholicism and there are "denominations", not "sects", and Tony used the analogy to describe differences of opinion among Lefties. He is apparently unchurched because the Christianity of Protestantism is remarkably consistent across the denominations. The same is true of Leftism.

For Tony we should come up with some literary device to describe Ronald Reagan...maybe Banquo's Ghost, or some other evanescent shade pointing a finger of accusation at them. They DO go nuts about Reagan, as you say, even now that he is dead.

Don't mean to deviate or detract from the levity of the preceding posts, but--have any of you ever thought that Grant Wood's 'tree-tops' strongly resembled rabbit-droppings? Is it just me?

About that Boraxo: We used the stuff for years. Remember it? Red, white, and black metal container (occasionally you'll see one rusting away on a shelf in a Cracker Barrel Restaurant) with a cautionary note on the rear, "Do not drink contents"? Well, let me tell you, I'm from the great midwest, and we not only used to drink the stuff, we bathed in it (when 'out' of Grandpa's homemade lye soap), brushed out teeth with it (when out of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda powder), bathed in it (when short of 'Drano'), and used it to dust our twenty-mule team pet canines for twenty-mule team flea infestations. And whenever our Boraxo ran out, we turned to that old tried-and-tested cleanser, "Lava" handsoap (with pumice).

Man, that pumice works wonders on problems like excess tooth enamel.

Proud to have grown up in the midwest. Very proud! Oh, how I miss the past. Am I a recidivist?

Robert:

You're worse than that. You're revanchist, which is surely due to your Stalinist upbringing you Right Wing bastard. At another time, it might be called Spartan, but not now. I recall that William Koenstler (name-dropping), when asked what he what do if he were to live in Cuba, he said he would work on a collective farm. Koenstler's only agricultural experience was with the stuff growing out of his ears and nose, but he thought he was quite the farm lad. What a posturing fool...

You, on the other hand, are the Real Deal. Hey, I was perusing my Dos Passos Bedtime Reader the other night, searching for Tony's quote. And another. Something like "we'll do everything for the poor but get off their backs." I know what the person meant then, but the tables are completely turned now. No shame in being "poor", pride in fact has replaced it.

To the point. Notice the Party Line developing among The Left that Reagan didn't bring down the Soviets, "history" did. "History was conspiring to end the Soviet Union" and variations of this verbal cement. The Lefty Idea Mills are working overtime on this stuff.

The first thing we might ask of The Left is, in clear view of the hysteria about Abu Ghraib, how long was long enough to wait for the world's largest slave labor camp to collapse? Apparently they were willing to wait forever, as long as the supply of penny loafers and cardigans held for them, and the battery cables were on someone else's genitals.

Well, Kennan's policy of Containment said nothing about what to do at the end, when violent and armed cultures are falling apart. We have the same concern about China, and had the same concern about Iraq, which is an untold story. What you do is hasten the end and control the outcome, which is what Reagan did with the USSR.

If The Left saw the end of the Soviet Union as a certainty, they were revoltingly slavish in their ideas about Detente and worse in their fears about annoying the Soviets with harsh talk. All of them were dead terrified of the USSR and had no such expectations about its decline and fall.

But revisionism is alive and well on The Left. I could drop a few more names here in support of this conclusion, but what the hell.

Deer Tinyvidal:

My name is Tom. I am a freshmen in collij. I was a A studint in hi skool. I did not stay back, and I want to say wut I think about Ronal Raygun. My teechur in hi skool sed Ronal Raygun was a bad persun. My perfessur in collij sed Ronal Raygun was a bad persun to.

Ronal Raygun did not lik teechur yoonyuns and stole money from teechurs and peeople with no money. teechurs are gud and Ronal Raygun was bad.

I like coolij and want to be a teechur. My perfessur sed I am smart enuf to be a gud teechur.
My perfessur is smart to.

sincerelly yers,

Tom Harkenn

Too bad someone (a 'comrade,' perhaps?) didn't clue Koenstler in on the "Ronco ear- and nose-hair trimmer"! Poor soul. He sported more thatch in one nostril than Leonid Brezhnev did on his entire body (for those of you born too late to experience the thrills, chills, and carnival-like atmosphere of the Brezhnev era, Tovarisch Brezhnev possessed eyebrows that, in comparison, made the ancient Hercynian forest look like the moonscape at Marine Corps Base, Twentynine Palms.

And, Rhod. About that "Dos Passos Bedtime Reader." You mean to tell me you've got one, too! Glory be! Why, just this second, I'm looking right at mine--it's sitting on my south bookshelf, comfortably situated between Hitler's absolutely hilarious spoof, "Mein Kampf," and Lenin's sparkling slapstick comedy, "What Must Be Done"! I ask you, is this a small world, or what?

And boy do I ever recall the days when American lefties feared 'annoying' the Soviets, Rhod! Years ago, one of my professors threw a truly uproarious party at his $100K Ozark dacha (hey, it was 1976, and if you were squeaking by on the GI Bill, those kinds of digs were real uptown--downright Czar-like!) That night, next to a roaring fire, we read scintillating passages from Marx' "Das Kapital," discussed the timeless beauty of Socialist Realism in the Soviet art world, and generally shared our collective sense of longing that we hadn't been born, say, in Moscow, Sverdlovsk, or Novosibirsk ("I left my heart...in old Sverdlovsk!") My professor and his wife whipped up a huge, tangy pot of savory borscht, baked a Red Army-sized pan of steamy, moist Ukrainian blackbread, brewed piping-hot tea from a silver samovar bearing the inscription, "Slava Rodina Rossiya!" ("Glory to Mother Russia!")

God, what a night! Between the blackbread, the borscht and the six Stolichnaya nightcaps, I dizzily thought to myself, "Maybe Patty Hearst and "Hanoi" Jane are really oracles, like they proclaim, and we all just need to be friends (like Rodney King implored) in order to achieve world peace!

All I can say is, that professor sure threw one hell of a party out of fear! Because, for one thing, he certainly couldn't have thrown a party of that magnitude simply because he admired the USSR ("the workers' paradise"), could he?

So,
Let me get this straight. I was a freshman straight out of a college Arts course, now I'm a teacher in a pseudo-intellectual staffroom, and anyway what do the left know about economics. You guys would be rubbish on "what's my line". These type of ad hominem or "that's just typical of the left" responses are no substitute for argument.
You're also pretty poor on motive- no Sipowiz- type detectives here. I love him but I bet he voted RR. My pride's not wounded, my pride don't matter and I did not even notice being coaxed to coherence- god you guys are good.
Anyway, I don't believe in wilful obscurity so,if any of the references made were hard to get, I will apologise. But, when I don't understand something - like what is a Move-On bake sale?- I attribute that to my own ignorance and look it up- I don't blame the guy who does know. As for the name dropping, my motive is the exact opposite of showing off. I attribute it to its author to show the unoriginality of my statement. When I failed to do so with the phrase "emotional fascism" I was damned with faint praise as "creative" but you took that back by adding it was meaningless. Sorry, it was a widely used phrase this side of the pond during the Dianification debate when many of us were ordered to feel. We had to cancel our football matches, stop all the clocks( come on guys, you know that's not one of mine), etc; and emote for this Sloane spending machine. So, as I am in your house, I will stop the attributions if you promise to never accuse me of creativity again.
So, what does that leave. The bad timing/ mind your manners argument. All the people he hurt have a right to kick back while he is alive and while he's dead. There are enough paid acolytes and poor dupes out there rewriting history and praising his superhuman virtues. Even Mr. Moore described his speechwriting as brilliant- wonder why he gave up this responsibility to hacks producing phrases like "bright shining con", was it? Conservatives are obviously not all stupid- please!!!- that's a playground argument. Reagan was not a top notch thinker but he had bright, crooked advisors. He was the front guy- the snakeoil salesman. If we're going to give him the credit for defeating the soviets and removing electrodes from genitals where was the high minded attitude to removing the same implements from our friends in Chile, Panama, Paraguay( a while ago), China and ,yeah , we showed those evil bastards in Cuba and the middle east how to conduct ourselves with our College high jinks in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. So, I believe I can tramp the dirt down on Reagan and its not worth Thatcher's while to leave the funeral service before she will get the same response. Don't kid me that you'll not chuckle and jibe when Chomsky or Michael Moore go and they only ever had the power to shout at you and shame you. Mrs. T and RR had real power and used it exclusively to promote moneyed interests. They did real damage to real people and these real people can feel fine about our response to your hysteria.
There is no moral equivalence between these two demons and the off the scale tyrants like Stalin and Hitler, but they are not good people. I know what Mr. Moore means about LBJ's vile character , but despite his past baggage and pole climbing careerism, he took brave decisions against his own past, particularly on civil rights. I still admire him greatly for this. He suffered for Vietnam, just as Licoln had nightmares for most of the Civil War battle period, but to think that he could have won with a different approach- that's pure John Rambo- that kind of thinking's on a par with creationism. Do you think if he told Ho Chi Min about A Star Wars system that could detect and destroy underground bunkers, Ho Chi would have bankrupted Charlie's treasury on R&D. We still faced the same battle challenges in Somalia and Iraq and, with our isolationist misunderstanding of the reasons for anti-west enmity, we're still failing to win hearts and minds.
Anyway, I notice the name dropping is starting to appear again so I will end with an unattributed quote from a real right wing hero- so I don't ahve to deal with the soviet loving crap argument again- " Democracy is the worst possible political system, apart from all the rest"

Tony,

Free association becomes you. You're sort of good at it. Your pride doesn't matter? Yes it does. It matters a lot because you are thoroughly annoyed at having an identity assigned to you by what we conclude from your own words.

You also seem to be preoccupied with shame issues, as you've raised the matter at least twice. It would seem from your posts that the "shame" you want us to feel is to be derived from an awareness of our moral shortcomings. Moral shortcomings you don't possess, as your undifferentiated goodness and compassion...however confused, bogus and misplaced it is...is permanently superior to anything we can offer. I am not impressed by your social consciousness because it is entirely secular, and the history of your righteousness is a prolonged nightmare.

I won't tease you any more. Whoever, by the way, hammered out the tedious phrase "emotional fascism" was a fool. You used the term without quotes, and I gave you undeserved credit for it. You used it because it has a certain similarity to other matters of style in your post, so I thought it was original. At any rate, you used it for a reason...probably because you liked it and probably also because the word "fascism" is the type of broad-purpose condemnation that people like you have been using for years.

Let me get to the point. The accusations that you find so objectionable were made by me. You whine essentially about not being taken seriously, and expecting "argument" here, an exchange of ideas maybe.

The reason you don't get this here and probably anywhere else is this: If you don't know what "arrogance" is, let me tell you. It is the result of arrogating qualities to yourself which you do not have. This is obvious. You have been schooled in the empty and endless litany of Leftist complaints, many of which are so old and unassignable that they no longer make sense to anyone except people like you. You don't have any arguments, you only have conclusions.

You need ideas, Tony, not just prejudices, anger and disappointments. Above all, you need a little good will. If you treat us like the cretins you think we are, then you get what you deserve. You sound like an interesting guy, but if you aren't an academic, you're certainly Red Brick. Or some imitation of it, because you have acquired all the necessary "ideas" to have succeeded there.

Good lord, Tony--like Nebuchadnezzar and his ill-fated tower of Babel, I suddenly seem to have been struck dumb, because, frankly, I can't understand one word of your previous post.

I think it was Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (now this 'right-winger' really knew fine brandy and world-class cigars!) who said, "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." Forced to say this though I am, I do however regret it: If Mr. Churchill could read that inane post of yours, he'd be spinning in his Bladon churchyard grave right now. I'm afraid you just proved the man indubitably correct!

Sorry, old boy.

My most heartfelt apology, Tony.

In my previous post, I misidentified myself as "Robert." From this point forward, you may address me not as Robert, but as "Soviet crap lover."

Whew. The sensation's almost orgasmic when one finally clears the air, isn't it?

"Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Kerry, Mr. Biden, Mr. Daschle, Mrs. Rodham-Clinton...tear down the stupidity!"

Tony Again:

In my haste to berate you I overlooked a good point you made. Ho Chi Minh would have bankrupted Charlie's (who's Charlie?) treasury no matter what tactical or strategic factors we had.

I neglected to mention this, but I was a "participant" in Vietnam, along with a lot of other men on this site. I would suspect that the mention of it would cause you to bristle, and think I was playing the vet card. Or worse, we would be objects of sympathy, doomed pawns and all that.

I was on the scene shortly after a particularly ghastly bit of nun-mutilation done by the Viet Cong, and just as an aside, I didn't hear your side making such a big deal of this sort of thing. Only if it's Contra nun-raping, but I'm sure you have some explanation. (If you want an argument, now is the time for it).

Your side was always mistaken in your "freedom fighter" fiction about the Viet Cong, and, yes, Ho Chi Minh...Pappa Ho to your side, was a genuine monster. He had the type of state with the coercive power to wage the type of war he waged, and the cost of "victory" never mattered. The cost of peace there was pretty high as well.
You are right about that.

Tony:

A couple more points need to be explored. Your post is so long and detailed that your "arguments" are concealed in the brush of your sniffling self justification and martyrdom.

Your preoccupation with South and Central American dictatorships is shared by Jimmy Carter and Christopher Dodd (among others), so don't worry about losing down there. Your side will almost certainly prevail even without Che. You dismiss Cuban totalitarianism, but with Chavez bringing up the rear, the painful realities of your egalitarianism will triumph. Your posts reveal that pain is to you the ticket to paradise or hell, depending upon who you are.

Next, I'm sorry you have to deal with "soviet loving crap" accusation, but dealing with the truth is never easy. Churchill was a real "right wing hero", was he? This remark is so idiotic that anything else you say which might be true is rendered ridiculous. Who is a "left wing hero". (spelling is probably wrong) Aneuran
Bevan? You refer to our state of mind as "hysteria". Control yourself, Tony, and remember the "sleep of reason". We are not "rubbish".

Are you actually suggesting that the deaths of Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore would be comparable to the death of Ronald Reagan? That IS an entirely new form of radical egalitarianism that only someone like you could invent.

Your Diana fetish is troubling. Pop culture is very annoying, I know, but keep things in perspective. "Creationism" shouldn't bother you at all. The reason it does is because you have the standard petty dictator's need to surround yourself with ideas you approve of, and to crush those you don't. This is the animating principle behind all Leftist thinking, and you aren't honest enough to admit it.

I won't ask you why you think there is animosity to The West, because repetition of a stupid idea doesn't make it true.

Last, anyone who reads your work carefully will be concerned about who you actually are. Your hatred for The Other is very frightening. You are not the man you pretend to be, and your frustration comes from being found out, from being exposed for the snarling little Lefty you see in the mirror everyday.

Rhod, (and to Soviet Crap lover-if he insists)
you got one thing right. I was expecting argument, an exchange of ideas. Silly me. I thought that might be the purpose of the website. So let me use your style and set up a patsy argument I can cleverly knock it down.
So, this is not a discussion website it's a cry for help from sufferer's of RWKJ syndrome- that's right wing knee jerk not knowledge and justice. You want people to post so you and your fellow sufferers can band together for comfort and snigger-
look, guys, he mentioned Dos Passos- what a pseud !
I bet he went to an inferior college and has a public sector job.
The slippery sod won't even own up to a previous admiration for the Soviets- not fair- that's argument dismissals 1 through 45 out the window.
Hold on- he mentioned creationism- right then his social consciousness is entirely secular! ( as opposed to what guys, religion? new age spiritualism? astrology?)
He thinks Winston Chusrchil's a right wing hero- what a laugh!
He's snarling and he's sniffling ( Can't help thinking of thwe Addams Family theme tune there).
He does not have arguments only CONCLUSIONS-
He does not like the identity assigned by our CONCLUSIONS- ( double standards become you).
He has a hatred of The Other- I don't think that comic or TV programme crossed over here.
He's from over the Pond- let's call him "old boy"- what's the reciprocal unused term over there- feller, cowpoke, muthafu...Damn that hollywood cultural imperialism!
Can I get serious for a minute? I am not interested in claiming superiority and I'll certainly never claim to have no shame, but obviously, I still believe my beliefs are sound. I'll own up to prejudices- I'm pretty knee jerk in my dismissals of political posturings from film stars- does RR count? Why don't you deal with that. What made RR so good? What is incorrect about the statemnts made against him?
Come on Rhod, you used the word arrogate correctly ( that impresses the socialist self-improver in me but it's the kind of thing that goes down badly in red brick circles)- you must have some thing you can string together.

Tony:

I'm glad you're back. Seriously. You have taken a beating here, for sure, most of it deserved.

Let's get the Creationism thing cleared up "straight away". That's the first reference I've made to you being from across the pond, unless it was red brick, which is an expression we don't use here. You seem like a red brick type to me, and that is kind of a good thing, unless you have some prole pretensions that don't allow of it.

If I were to use the term "Darwinists" or "evolutionists" pejoratively (is that word okay with social improvers?), you would be the first to dismiss, scorn or revile me for using it. True? So you deserved the creationist tweak. I have no problem with creationists, not because I reject evolution, but because, unlike you (and this I deduce from your words), I don't regard Believers as the enemy of truth, whatever it is. You apparently do.

What you might do from the start, is read some of your posts. Not the ones, like the most recent, but where you throw symbols overboard like so much flotsam, symbols which at this stage of my life, I have seen so many times on The Left that I no longer take you seriously because there is no gain in "arguing" with you.

I actually think, perhaps against public opinion here, that you are a very intelligent Brit with all the wrong ideas, in possession of a good heart with a permanent sense of righteous anger inherited from the cloth cap, forelock-tugging culture which caused so much grief in your country. I have roots there too, and the mills were satanic indeed. And you haven't answered my question about Bevan. Is he a "left wing hero"?
Does he qualify?

I won't argue Ronald Reagan with you because I am unsuited to have heroes, and my admiration for people is less about who they were than what they have overcome...and whether they struggled to rise about their faults. Life is a net proposition for all of us, and I am not so quick to condemn for ideological reasons as you are. My own life is not spotless. Reagan could not have been the monster that you see. It's ridiculous. If you call me to account for Kerry, I think Kerry is a bad man, period. I know something about that war, and this is NOT AIMED AT YOU, but if you get anything at all from war, it is a humility so dense and deep that a man like Kerry seems like a freak. There are a lot of men here who understand that, and don't wear the war like a garment.

I am also more forgiving than you, because if a public man has faults, and any man who has moved through life as Ronald Reagan did, his life might be tarnished. But I cannot imagine a cynicism as great as yours, which demands a purity of experience which almost certainly you do not have. Nothing is that simple.

Neither Reagan nor Mrs. T are "demons" to me. I think your preoccupation with these people, as seen through the lens of your politics, is unhealthy for you. I mean that, so please do not fall back into this martyred pose on this account. (I am not patronizing you) And Churchill? Is he a right wing hero because he wasn't Labor? At least officially? History has a place for Churchills, and we, all of us, needed him at that time, and I consider him important and not reduced to the level of a "right wing hero". The magnitude of his accomplishments, to me, is impressive. I am not the man he was, and that is my standard. To summarize him as you do is foolish and you know it is. Control your scorn for a moment and consider what you say.

Here's my complaint. I believe that the type of world you wish for is an illusion, that your secularity (?) always ends in authoritarianism, that the world is not as bad as you think it is, nor are the people you despise as bad as you think they are...or were.

I MUST SAY THIS! What you have said about MANY things is indistinguishable from the standard American and British upper middle class Leftist crap that we hear all the time, and it NEVER gets any better, makes any more sense, and is entirely resistant to reason. It is NOT WORTHY OF YOU! Many of you are not good people and your politics is an extension of your need to control, rearrange and oppress the people you despise. To afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, to borrow a phrase ( so sue me).

You have made me very angry, because you evade the meanings you intend to leave, and when we identify them, you criticize us...me...for doing it. I'm not going to respond anymore, Tony, which is a healthier thing for me. I feel some regret about this, because some of it might have been unfair to you, but not very much.

Sincerely,

Rhoderick Leslie

Tony:

You will probably find some, lots, of fault in my remark that I am not so quick to condemn for ideological reasons. I didn't say I didn't condemn for ideological reasons at all, and I do it quickly if it's deserved. You don't discuss gravity with a guy threatening to jump from a window. You simply tell him how stupid he is. That, of course, does not mean you. Seriously.

Two things:

Rhod, I just got back in town, and will mail you shortly.

And, Tony--man, I don't know what's up with you, but I've gotta' ask: Are you on dope, or something? Either that, or your posts are simply way, way over my head; apparently, you're well beyond my limited intellect, friend, for reading your reasoning is akin to trying to decipher the mind-set of the Iraqis, or trying to figure--as Freud lamented--what it is, exactly, that women truly want.

You're a 'riddle within a mystery wrapped inside an enigma,' or something like that.

And, me? I'm just ordinary, run-of-the-mill bourgeoisie and a wannabe 'Soviet crap lover'! I am why I am, and that's all that I am!

I am seriously trying to understand the Tony Effect. What disqualifies Tony from a serious debate on any issue - even if he knows something about it - is his behavior. It was described once before on this site.

You see a man relieving himself on your front porch (Tony). You open the door to admonish him and he barges into your house. He calls your wife a tramp. He attacks your children. He smashes the china, screaming something about crass materialism. He middle-fingers the photoes of your grandmother, calling her a dead submissive female capitalist tool. He kicks the cat out the door and screams "be free!", and continues in an ideological rant as he destroys your house.

If you try to stop him or show any anger or resistance, Tony is angrier at you for misunderstanding his motives. He's hurt. He's offended and indignant. He expects you to sit idly by, wait until he is through, and then learn something from the event.

Aptly put, Kingsmill. For me, you just described the Clinton presidency. As embarrassed as I am to admit it, I was a Democrat until 1992, or until Dems' began publicly baring their vicious ideological teeth with the gay issue, their underhanded race-baiting tactics, their irrational gender enmity-producing behavior, and such.

Doesn't look like things are going to change for these folks anytime soon, either.

What do you do with people like these?

Robert:

Nothing. They are a consequence of civilization and its discontents. I think you see it more where religion no longer matters, but the need for it remains. Liberalism, Leftism fulfills the same expectations and needs that conventional religions provide for others.

What Liberalism doesn't require, and most religions do, is some moral discipline. Some sacrifice, penance and the flowering of humility. Moral chaos is the only good in Liberalism, but they don't know it.

I think we are in trouble. The large commercial republic envisioned by Madison, the one which would "break and control faction" because everyone was pursuing his/her self-interest, has rendered something new and unpredictable.

The meritocracy has produced a leisure class which has exchanged self restraint and duty for nihilism, and converted self improvement into self projection. The appeal of the Clintons (and not only them) will be studied years from now as a symptom of the corrosion in our public life. It is very worrisome.

Hi guys,
I've been busy for the past few days with the start of a major football ( I think you guys call it soccer) tournament. So, imagine my surprise on coming back to find I've had an effect named after me, my mom will be so proud.
Nonetheless, Kingsmill's (that's a loaf of bread over here- is it an american brand?)post did enlighten me more than he intended. I have already confessed my puzzlement at the responses I provoked. His use of the metaphor of housebreaking and vandalism reveals a sense of ownership of this site and outrage at any intrusion. The purpose of the site would seem to be for like minded people to huddle round the same comfort blanket and reinforce each other's prejudices about the evils of The Other( capital letters wasn't it Rhod?). Notice the construction of the last offending sentence and you 'll see that I've become adept at setting up the patsy argument for knocking down too. And yet, in the mildest possible way, you libertarians are practising censorship. Rhod won't post anymore, Kingsmill has disqualified me from "serious" debate(as if I'd aspire to such heights), and Robert does not understand me ,though luckily for him I'm not an Iraqi woman.
There's just time for a couple of points before I go, as I can hear the German and Dutch national anthems commencing the next match.
Your tolerance in face of my boorish behaviour is more than you would practise in real life. A few years back in Florida, a compatriot of mine got lost after a night on the tiles, a commonplace occurence on Fri-Sun night binges in my hometown. He made the fatal mistake of seeking neighbourly guidance by knocking on someone's front door in that state. He was shot in the back as he left the household, having failed to make himself understood (please, this is not an analogy of my situation here- we are much more trivial.) No charges were brought and nothing but sympathy was forthcoming from the police dept; to the householder- they obviously believed in the adage from the Warren Zevon song- "Don't come in my yard if you don't know my rotweiller's name!"
Robert, there's a difference between being anti-intellectual and anti-intellect. You don't wan't learning worn lightly. You prefer ignorance displayed heavily. Inverted snobbery is still snobbery, old bean!
May your road always be uphill with the wind in your faces and may humility smack your backsides, but only if you don't enjoy that sort of thing.
Guys, the match has started- you don't have to support the germans you know.

Tony:
Steady on, old boy. Your post is really over the top, wouldn't you say? Great Britain, or as Peter Cook once said, commonly called "Britain", produces even among its socialist improvers a bottomless arrogance. Insipid English culture reasserts itself everywhere it lands, and you are no exception. Nothing escapes you, not even vulgarity. For that reason alone, you should feel honored that anyone here took the time to answer you. They thought you were worth it.

You will appreciate this, because you can use it in conversation later, with your best public school accent and pretend that you made it up. (You are, after all, a pretender.) Every virtue is less formidable when the man is made aware that he has it, and then tells others about it. We hear very much about your virtues, usually in combination with a lament about dashed expectations.

For someone so dismissive of this website, you have spent much time here whinging (you don't hear "whinging" here much) and moaning about yourself, your tedious vanity on display for everyone to see. We know why. You've lost, among those you regard as inferior to you, who perceive you for what you are, an effete loser, and you simply haven't got the goods when it counts.

I await your stinging rebuke with no interest at all. You may have the last word.

Mr. Moore: This is the last one.

Tony, at first glance I thought I just might respond at length to your recent post--and, then again, after giving the matter further thought, I've decided instead to sit down and watch one of my all-time favorite movies, "Romy & Michelle's High School Reunion."

Sorry, old bean--I just couldn't make heads nor tails out of your latest response, so, like Rhod and Kingsmill, I'm out of here.

Enjoy your 'football.' Hope fans don't have a hissy at the outcome of that Belgian-German contest, and attempt to burn the stadium down.

Reagan signed legislation over his eight years in office that gave researchers $6 billion dollars, which helped to eventually find a way to control AIDS.

The last time I checked, AIDS was easily prevented by NOT HAVING SEX. How many innocent victims have died because of the perverted actions of homosexuals who spread AIDS throughout the world.

Now we have a millions of people dying around the world because of them and they want to blame Reagan?

Maybe if they kept their pants zipped up, this never would have happened in the first place. Lets put the blame where it belongs, on the shoulders of the homosexual community. The first recorded case of AIDS was found in a homosexual, the disease was spread from one homo to another and then it leaked into the heterosexual community and now the world.

If you idiot leftists want to blame someone about not doing anything about AIDS go blame Jiang Zemin the dictator of China who has allocated $0.00 towards fighting AIDS which is rampant in China.

The homosexual community has blood on their hands, not Ronald Reagan.

AIDS is a horrible disease, but to blame Reagan for the irresponsibility of thousands of homosexuals defies common sense. To lie and say he did nothing is even worse.

Robert:

The little crypto-fascist punk never answered a single question we asked him, either. There was an awful lot of masochism there, too. Disturbing.
I guarantee he won't be able to leave without displaying a little more shredded plumage, unless John exercises his private property rights and "censors" him. Let's hope. Take out the trash, John.

Mr. Moore:

I noticed earlier, but failed to mention, two points in Tony Gilespie's last post. The one where he seems to pretend that he has friends with whom he can watch a football match.

1) He recounts a sad tale from Florida, in which he imbeds the accusation that we, here, would wish to see him, Tony, murdered. And,

2) At the end of his post he subtly accuses us here of the possibility of homosexual sado-masochism. This sort of thing is often followed by scatalogical references, so he should be stopped now.

If you scratch a Tony Gilespie, beneath the surface you usually find a repressed, paranoid, inadequate misfit pretending to be a mensch. This is obviously the case. Do we need to have other posts from this detestable buffoon?

Sorry, guys.

I think leaving the smelly trash out in the open helps make my point.

So in this case, it stays.

Don't worry, there will be more as various idiots and haters find this page. Feel free to have at them (although my wife pointed out to me, after I shredded an idiot, that one doesn't want to shred someone who might be so mentally ill that their defensive systems collapse and the commit suicide.

So if someone who looks really nuts (as opposed to the usual leftist psychosis) shows up, please keep this in mind.

My wife is a little too kind, but she has a point.

John

Kingsmill

Please see my comment above. This is where we can show the sickness of the left.

Some of these guys are simply Useful Idiots, college kids or young indoctrinated homosexuals spouting criticism without any knowledge.

Some are mentally unbalanced.

Some are simply haters - too many, in fact.

Because this particular article is dedicated to exposing their lack of humanity and maturity, and their level of hatred, I am loathe to remove posts.

To be honest, I haven't been following Tony's postings. I've other duties that are pressing.

Respectfully,

John

Remember when people of Tony's and 'JohnnyK's' bent practically fell over backward in their deplorable effort to 'defend' the 'innocence' of O.J. Simpson? (I hope I don't offend any O.J. fans who're reading this site! And, if I am, please let me know, and I promise never to darken your electronic doorstep, again!)

And, Tony: please know that I never once wished you 'murdered' (perhaps a little 'roughed-up,' say, like in a good, old-fashioned boot camp blanket party--but never 'murdered.')

In the sagely words of Mr. Rodney King--deity, bon vivant, and extortionist extraordanaire--"Can't we all just git' along?"

You know, I think I actually love contemporary illiberal 'liberalism.' I mean, is there anything more entertaining in life than listening to them wax philosophic?

Why, just yesterday afternoon, I passed a woman on the highway who's bumper sticker read: "Won't it be nice when schoolchildren have all the money they need for education, and the Air Force has to conduct a bake sale in order to pay for a bomber.?"

Now that, folks, was profound. And I do mean p-r-o-f-o-u-n-d!

Robert:

I think they wane philosophic. Had to put down issue six of the Time/Life Right Wing Agenda series to check out tinyvital. Interesting section on Churchill, by the way, just before an article about The Code. Shove together everything by John Dos Passos and Arthur Koestler and apply the code and you can predict the future.

This isn't fair to Tony, who isn't here to defend himself. I also never thought about killing him, and have never indulged in spanking outside of my own kids. We really pounded them, too, which turned them into fierce right-wing thugs. We're really proud.

The other day, I had the displeasure of listening to a "conservative" Middle East "scholar" ramble through a lecture on the potential receptivity to democracy in places like Iraq and Iran. His thesis, once I mined it from a wandering trail of endless dead-ends and unanswered "what I mean is..." utterances, amounted to the following: culture, specifically that of the Middle East, is irrelevant to a nation's capability of accepting democracy as its form of government.

He cited examples of various dictators who have already felt compelled to have "democratic elections", thereby demonstrating that the need to have a veneer of democracy is sign enough that a free government could be sustained.

Here is the root of the first problem: the equating of democracy with freedom. Democracy is simply the rule of the majority. In a democracy, the minority gets fucked. When the minority complains about said fucking, the majority tells it:

"Fuck you, it's in the 'public interest' that you get fucked. Therefore, shut your trap, get in the voting booth, and let us fuck you once more."
Sure, democracy might be acceptable to any existing culture in the Middle East. Where you might have a problem, however, is trying to talk to some of those guys about things like constitutional republics. I.e., governments based on objective law that uphold the rights of the individual. Instilling that in the Middle East might not be so easy.

So, here we had yet another Republican who had absolutely no conception of the relationship between ideas, culture, and forms of government. He was actually asserting that dictatorships could be transformed into "democracies" with the simple application of "external pressure". That pressure coming from (a) military force, or (b) diplomatic "pressure".

Evidently, whether your culture makes it a habit of stoning people to death for social faux pas like adultery has no bearing on whether or not your culture will appreciate a government that protects individual rights.

There are two possible courses we can take to be safe in the long run. The first, contrary to the aforementioned horseshit, is to be cultural imperialists. That is, eliminate religion from the fucking planet and maybe teach a few people that suicide bombings aren't the ideal course of action for a human being. The second possible course of action is to keep the barrels of our guns pointing directly at any two-bit dictator and let him know that he will suffer the same fate as Saddam Hussein should he support or harbor terrorists.

So pick your solution. Personally, the cultural imperialism thing is an optimistic choice, but frankly I don't know if we can handle it. Regardless of what we do, we're gonna need our finger on the button anyway, so frequent threats of mass annihilation in the Middle East will probably be necessary, and maybe sufficient.

But never mind that. Let me get to the punchline.

After the above limp-wristed conservative finished his tedious sleep-inducing speech, I felt compelled to ask a question. How, I asked, can you argue that culture is irrelevant? How can you argue that "pressure" is enough to change an entire government in the long-run?

His answer?

"I wasn't really arguing. I was suggesting."
Yes, he followed that up with other equally pussified language. But that was the only statement that stayed with me. And I was actually ready to semi-forget that statement, or at least not write about it. Then I turned on the news tonight.

On two cable news stations, I heard the following from two paid "experts" in defense of their supposed positions:

"You can make an argument for that."
Granted, this isn't as bad as refusing to "argue" in favor of "suggesting", but Jesus Christ, it's still pretty goddamn bad. Either make the fucking argument, or don't make it. What the hell does it even mean to say "you can make an argument for that"? Doesn't it matter at all what kind of argument you make?

For example, what if the only kind of argument you could make for it was a completely shitty argument? An argument devoid not only of facts, but of all common sense whatsoever? Would it really be relevant that you could "make an argument" for it?

Don't tell me that some random moron could make an argument for something. And sure as fuck don't tell me that you're only "suggesting" something. Either say it, or don't say it. If you don't have the balls to stand up for your own ideas, then either shut your mouth, or hire a ventriloquist who has the gonads to "argue" them for you.

Though, come to think of it, I guess in either case you'd need to shut your goddamn mouth. (I like to be accurate.)

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