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.)

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.

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!

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

What do you do with people like these?

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.