Letters to the Editor
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WT Speaks For Me!
Well said, William.
I want to step back from all the details of this debate just to recapture what originally moved me: Mona openly stated that libertarians had a played a key role in providing the electoral balance of power that put Bush and the rubber-stamp Republicans in power.
In sharp contrast, whatever motivations people may have had, or however they were mislead, there is no history of the left in America bringing authoritarians to power. In the early part of the last century, for example, there were a number of socialist mayors elected across the country, and not one of them turned into even as authoritarian a leader as the first Mayor Daley.
However intriguing, the sorts of debates that Mona is dragging folks into now--and that I must bear full responsibility for starting--are utterly irrelevant to this fundamental point. Whatever folks did or did not believe about the Soviet Union, they did not go around enabling an authoritarian leftist takeover of American political institutions the way that libertarians have enabled the authoritarian GOP. It just didn't happen.
And that's my point, pure and simple.
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Half empty or half full?
"I haven't felt such hope in a very long time." - DCLaw1
"I feel a little cold coming on" - Stephen Colbert's Living Will
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I just read it, WT
and it's interesting that you also responded to the same money quote that Paul R responded to, and that I might have, as well.
Wrt: "I'd [also] like to weigh in on the side of liberalism and the democratic left..."
The discussions I've read here have helped me clarify why I react so differently to various people, even though we are supposedly near one another on the political continuum.
The distinctions between Liberalism and Libertarianism are really key, and like Paul R, I, too, see many "results" of falsely conflating the two parties all around me. Like, e.g., the "constitution" of our new SCOTUS. Couldn't have happened without Nader, even with the voting irregularities.
Tony Auth had a great cartoon last week... all nine justices, 5 of them, the Catholic ones, all wearing papish headgear.
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Did Ledeen Violate the Logan Act?
Just wondering?
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@LWM
I never said a word abut Allen Weinstein, and have not even read his books -- nor are Klehr and Haynes original research and publications based upon Wesinstein. Both Ellen Schrecker and Maurice Isserman --- two highly respected left-of-center historians -- have conceded that Klehr and Haynes have made their case through THEIR (K & H's)research, not Weinstein's.
When you get started on this subject you betray a great deal of ignorance of historians, and the state of the evidence. I'm skeptical as to why Weinstein won't release some of his notes, but non-rightwingers have also found his work extremely persuasive.
And the fact that Klehr and Haynes write at a venue affiliated with George Mason University is a truly stupid reason to attempt to discredit them. George mason is a respectable institution.
Really, you just do not know what you are talking about. Even very liberal Bruce Craig who wrote the Harry Dexter White bio, concluded with all sorts of special pleading about White's allegedly pure motives, that White committed espionage for Stalin. Except for the occasional lefty in comments sections, it is no longer even usual to find folks denying what Klehr and Haynes have demonstrated -- the argument has moved on to what the fact of all that espionage means in terms of sullying the Communists in all their works, and whether anti-Communism was not still worse than the espionage. You literally are behind where the debate is now going on. (shrug)
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@PR, WT, LWM
PR:
...there is no history of the left in America bringing authoritarians to power.
I think he was generally benevolent, and we needed him at the time, but I think one could make a pretty good case for FDR being authoritarian.
Not trying to contradict you, really, but I don't think the arguments are so lilly-white and ebony-black. And I have had this conversation with Mona before, which I finally dropped out of when she reported that she believed Arthur Miller a Stalinist. I figured, at that point, there wasn't any common ground for a reasonable discussion.
Ultimately, I find libertarianism wanting, but I am idealistic enough to not want it to be so.
Ultimately I find liberalism trying, but I am idealistic enough to work through it.
“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”
-Kurt Vonnegut
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Test
I just lost a long comment that I can't rewrite this late at night -- I just want to see if I can get in a comment -- I wanted to thank WT.
Michelle
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Thank you, WT (second try)
My best friend was in SDS. He joined as a teenager in DC while attending an alternative school (sent there for his political beliefs). His father was a career foreign service officer who retired when Carter was elected and then regretted doing so once reagan was in office. By the time I met him, my friend's father (a Marine) had started sending money to Palestinian organizations, recognized the folly of Reagan and Bush I, and found himself alligned with Jimmy Carter. The last two books he read were Palestine Peace not Aparthied and The Road.
My friend and I used to argue about Marx, Trotsky, Bucharin, Modotti. He always called me an anarchist -- I accused him of being a Stalinist. He refused to vote for years. I finally convinced him to do so when George W. Bush was running for gov. of Texas. We have voted together ever since. Here's a poem of his that he let me put on my blog.
I guess what this is all getting to is the way Mona tries to make so many of us defend our beliefs. Even in the last comment from her that I read, she just treats LWM like a child. She scolds. She shrugs. She points out what she percieves to be ignorance. She deflects. I am so very tired of this. And I know I can go to another blog, comment elsewhere. Mona used to attack Glenn relentlessly with gotcha arguments. Now she is highjacking this thread -- another very good one -- with her smears of people who comment here far more than she does.
Mona, sorry, I should have addressed you directly. The Stalinists aren't even the boogey man you make them out to be in the former Soviet Republics. It's the crazy capitalists that threaten them. Please, just let it go.
Sorry for the long post.