Letters to the Editor
walter_map
Published Letters: 1429 Editor's Choice: 20
-
Paul Dirks
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One of the more annoying things That people seem to like to do here is tell other people what they are thinking or feeling without bothering to gather a clue before holding forth.
Toxicity Warning seems especially fond of the practice but our new friend Thrasher seems to be following a similar MO.
It's a debate tactic and a logical fallacy characteristic of neoconservatives. It pervades the rhetoric of neoconservatives generally and is typical of WSJ editorials and most of the commentary of Coulter and Limbaugh. It's one of the ways you can use to identify persons with off-base positions, otherwise seemingly reasonable, as neoconservative poseurs.
Such persons were quite common on the NYT forums. They started showing up on Salon rather frequently in just the last few weeks - just in time for the online election discussions.
-
L.W.M.
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Read Garrity
Coy. And still not an answer.
Besides, I didn't ask you. I asked Mr. Spud. Let him answer, if he can.
We don't have a "bloated standing military".
The US spends at least as much, and probably twice as much, on its military as the rest of the world combined.
This is vastly more than is needed to 'defend the country'. Therefore it's real purpose has to be something else.
Like rob other countries and enrich the military-industrial complex at the expense of the citizenry of the US as a whole.
Of that there isn't any doubt at all, even among analysts in the Pentagon and the CIA.
-
L.W.M.
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Today there are again two extremes in foreign policy worth noting, moderating, and reconciling. The first is the tendency to turn sharply inward, which, taken to an extreme, leads to a xenophobic, bad-tempered nationalism that spites America's optimism and its larger sense of national purpose.
What's the other extreme?
And why did Garrity avoid discussing it?
-
L.W.M
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The bipolar, two superpower power arrangement is and was the most stable. Multipolar or unipolar power arrangement is a recipe for a dangerous world.
Which completely avoids discussion of other alternatives, for example, that of a cooperative world without military "power arrangements".
Is your thinking always so strictly in military terms? Is war always the answer to any question?
-
L.W.M.
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Today there are again two extremes in foreign policy worth noting, moderating, and reconciling. The first is the tendency to turn sharply inward, which, taken to an extreme, leads to a xenophobic, bad-tempered nationalism that spites America's optimism and its larger sense of national purpose.
What's the other extreme?
And why did your post of Garrity avoid discussing it?
-
L.W.M.
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Evasive.
How long have you been able to get away with posing as a reasonable person, neocon?
-
Mr. Spud
[Read the article: Jonah Goldberg and Glenn Reynolds warn of "social unraveling" if Obama loses]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]By the way, do neocons follow you wherever you go?
Neoconservatism is a well-financed and pervasive influence in contemporary politics, not only in the US but internationally. It's been around for fifty years now, and has it's roots in US corporatism dating at least from the McKinley administration.
Some people have tracked fascism since its inception in the 19th century, and followed its permutations. Neoconservatism is modern US version of fascism and dominates US political discourse by every possible means, fair and foul.
Democracy, which has grown up in the last three hundred years, represents, with its emphasis upon individual responsibility and individual actions, the most difficult societal system, requiring a definite human maturity. Totalitarianism and especially fascism can in many ways be regarded as an escape from this difficulty into the irresponsibility of following a leader who deprives the people of their liberty and their maturity but promises them 'security' and 'economic progress'. Hence the celebration and promotion of immaturity and self-gratification in the media and entertainment industries, and in U.S. culture in general.
Totalitarian fascism in the 1930's found democracy, because of social distortions and inequality and resultant economic weakness, completely unprepared for the heavy and decisive blows which its implacable enemy intended to deal it, through propaganda, terror, and war. Thus it happened that it became a world-wide movement which put democracy not only on the defensive but in mortal danger.
Many scholars believe the last fifty years of progressive middle-class freedom and prosperity to have been only a temporary aberration of history, since most of human history has been characterized by large poor populations dominated by small ruling classes. Fascism appears to be the natural political disease of modern society for a number of reasons, and may be the natural end result of human civilization.
Fascism in America began as a reaction by many of the wealthy and powerful industrial elite to FDR's reforms; it has taken fascism in America fifty years to recover from the reversals it suffered from the Great Depression and WWII. Its eventual success was presaged by the joining of the military-industrial complex with the Religious Right in the 1970's.
Neoconservative totalitarianism has subverted the greatest democracy in the world, and has the will and the means to make that subversion permanent, and to extend it to other countries by coercion, fraud, and force.
Scoff if you like. And don't thank me. I tremble at your doom. In the long run, you probably won't be able to avoid becoming their victim.
And that is likely to be sooner, rather than later.