The true face of the Left - Chavez supports Gaddafi

It’s a lonely life being a liberal. On this forum you spend your time arguing with new American fascists and their European neo Nazi friends, in their squalid political debate which demonizes hundreds of millions of muslims, denounces science and reason in favour of superstitious nonsense, and spins the horrid myth of American exceptionalism everywhere.

But sometimes it is all worth it. When you read the words of this Libyan talking about the events in his country, you know that liberalism is a good and noble cause. It is as worth fighting for now as it was when Tom Paine, that citizen of the world, called it the “cause of all mankind”:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/22/libya-gaddafi-tripoli-hisham-matar

These are beautiful words for liberals to hear.

But even as we lament the complete disappearance of mainstream conservatives in America, and their unconditional surrender of the GOP to the extreme Right, let us not forget the other old enemy of liberalism: the totalitarian Left.

The collapse of the USSR under the weight of its bureaucratic incompetence has had a significant effect on the Left. Leftists used to be largely aware of the degeneration of their idealism into Stalinist thuggery and atrocity. Left ideology was moderated by an insistence on democracy and human rights to the extent that many leftists were bitter enemies of the planned economies and their supporters who maintained their power by tyranny.

But this has largely disappeared. Now we get two acts of betrayal from the Left: the first, and most reprehensible, is from the far Left. Hugo Chavez and his support of Gaddafi is the case in point:

It must be clear to all liberals that this man is the bitterest enemy of freedom. It is telling that he cannot tell the difference between his own legitimacy – as an elected leader – and the murderous thug who is his ally. How is this different from conservatives in Western democracies who supported the thug Pinochet? It isn’t. It clearly begs the question as to his commitment to Venezuela’s own democratic system.

The fact that there are hundreds of thousands of leftists throughout the West who support this demagogue, just shows how far the Left has sunk in its commitment to human rights and the liberty of the individual. Even on here moon calls the freedom fighters "assassins" and makes apology for the tyrants of Gaddafi's regime.

Let us be under no illusions: those on the Left who make any apology for Chavez are no different from those who gave us the gulag and the laogai. They are our unequivocal foes, just as much as the new American Tories who run the GOP, and need to be faced down on every occasion that they pop up their heads.

The second type of betrayal is by the more moderate leftists: those who recoil at supporting thugs like Gaddafi, Chavez and Castro, but are so consumed with the need to feel ideologically pure and righteous that they oppose any action by the democracies to nurture freedom in places of tyranny. We heard them defending Saddam and urging us to leave dictators alone. The utter incompetence of the early campaigns in Iraq under Rumsfeld, before the military strategy was revised, did maybe suggest that they had a point. Maybe intervention, despite being morally right, was completely ineffective. It just didn't work.

But now, look at how they even condemn a situation where the revolution has been carried out by Libyans, and NATO has been an ally of the Libyan people, only extending its role at the request of the rebels. Our moderate leftists still cannot cope and they wring their hands and squeak about how interventionism is still wrong, as our TV screens fill with Libyans thanking Britain, France, NATO and America for liberating them.

Liberalism is an ideology with clear principles:

Firstly we stand for democracy and the right of the people to determine their own government. That was what the slogan “no taxation without representation” meant. It was primarily about representation. We have no truck with right wing anarchists who want “no government”. That has never been the tradition of our politics, and is merely a latter day invention by rightist counter revolutionaries in America.

Secondly we stand for the rule of law as a means to protect the individual from the tyranny of the majority. There is no democracy worth having without the rule of law to protect the universal rights of man.

These two principles clearly divide and balance each other.

From the democratic side we support a social contract (a concept that underpins the American Revolution) between the people and its government where the government provides collective arrangements subject to the ongoing consent of the people.

To this end we support those government activities which it has been clearly demonstrated are best provided by government: police, education, defence, regulated utilities and now health, which the private sector has miserably failed to provide effectively in an unregulated format.

On the rule of law side on the other hand we stand for the rights of property, free speech, the right to a fair trial and judgement by a jury of our peers, freedom of religion, freedom of the press and freedom of people to engage in business through the market. And in this latter enterprise we largely support the principles laid down by the Enlightenment economists like Ricardo and Smith, that the market be free, but regulated against cartels (it is this latter prescription that moronic conservatives ignore in their fervour to protect short-termist bankers and oligarchic health care providers – they confuse chaos with freedom).

Our ideology is clear. It is radical, empowering, and it is balanced (the latter quality being something that the usually "thick as a brick" extremists cannot understand). It is foursquare in the tradition of the founding fathers of the USA and the Enlightenment philosophers of eighteenth century Europe.

Ranged against us are a whole host of foes, from new fascists in the US Tea Party to unreconstructed Stalinists like Chavez. When I read about the triumph of the Libyan people and the prospect that they be brought into a free, democratic, liberal capitalist Europe, I am reinforced in my conviction of the righteousness of the liberal cause against the forces of darkness from right and left. The Libyan people are our brothers and sisters. They are as deserving of liberty as we are. And it is our moral duty to assist them in any way we can.

 

The American Left can't hear you. It's busy fighting for its life.

Edit: Libyans are not the brothers and sisters of Americans. America is totally alone.

 

Khadafi has NO MONEY.. and no friends.. Chavez will NOT take him in. Its too late for that.

 

Yes, I know that the extreme right and the extreme left are allied in this isolationism. Just as they were united in the 1930s in their appeasement of fascism.

Liberals on the other hand saw that it was entirely in the USA's self interest to engage with the rest of the world and take the mantle of global leadership. This resulted in the USA's post war global dominance and the current economic prosperity of the USA.

I always thought that Americans were:

(a) largely Christian and therefore, in compliance with Christian doctrine, regarded all humans as their brothers and sisters

and

(b) regarded their values as "universal" and applicable to the whole of humanity.

Your post is very unamerican.

 

The post is not unamerican. It is post-American. That's the difference between is and was. The world does not seek global leadership by America, nor does the world seek American or Western values of the type which grew out of the European Enlightenment. That era is gone. A new order will arise and new leaders will appear, but they will not be Western and their ideas will not grow out of the European Enlightenment.

The years after 2001 demonstrated the world's hatred for conservative America. But the world didn't realize that conservative America could prevent the country from helping spread the values you hold dear. That's why you are now a voice crying in the wilderness.

A new order is being born. It will not resemble anything originating in the thoughts of Locke, Rosseau, Voltaire, or Montesquieu. Competing forces will rush in to fill the vacuum created by America's departure. Those forces will be inimical to the ideas you love. Ask not for whom the bell tolls.

 

I like that argument. We are heading into a post American world. I would just like to see it infused with American values in the same way that the American world is infused with the best of British.

Yes, sorry for the miscategorizing of you. Your view is refreshingly honest, if too dystopian for my taste. I still see Conficianism purely in Enlightenment terms as ultimately a reactionary feudal ideology.

So you now admit that conservative America is the bitterest enemy of democracy and the rule of law. That's what I like about you. No lies. Just as it is. Does your rejection of the values of the American Revolution have a philosophical basis or is it just clever sophistry to amuse yourelf on a forum?

Yes, but you should be clearer. Predicting the forces of darkness is one thing. Embracing them, quite another. They are two separate subjects. As for your quote from Donne, it merits a better setting, perhaps the original:

 

Did it ever occur to you that Chavez's support of Libya is not a right or left thing, not a liberal or conservative thing, but an independent nation verses a global state thing? People all over the world feel barely represented by their local governments, not represented at all by their national governments, and those who push the torch of globalism, whether through money, force or guilt trips with cries of humanity just keep trucking on, shoving it down our throats. People who love don't just love people, they love their communities, regions and nations. People aren't just loyal to their people, they are loyal to their communities, regions, and NATIONS. A globalists knows no love, but that of their own self righteousness. A globalists knows no loyalty, but that to their own pursuits. A new order is coming, but those who think they will be in control of it have a rude awakening in store.

 

Yes, the term New Order was that used by the Nazis and it is no coincidence that those who favour fascism in the USA favour this term too. Of course Chavez is an internationalist and believes in the international revolution, as all good Marxist Leninists do. His support of Libyan Stalinism is totally fraternal.

But you are right. Chavez is trying primarily to whip up xenophobia and nationalism amongst Venezualans. That is his primary tactic in lending support to butchers and murderers. It's a classic totalitarian tactic to make people hate foreigners and be afraid of them. It lays the foundations for things like the suspension of democracy and the rule of law. His purpose is to make his people afraid of an impending US invasion - something which is not on the cards, but which suits Chavez to invent.

It's good that this thread teases out the basic empathy that new american fascism has with totalitarian Marxism.

This is just a lie isn't it? It argues that if you love foreigners, you can't also love your family. It's a loathsome and stunted piece of backwardness.

It is a philosophy at the heart of Conficuianism which isolated China - undisputedly the most advanced country in the fifteenth century - and subjected its people to brutal, grinding poverty for centuries. On the other hand it was England, open to the world and infused with a spirit of adventure, that created global trade, an industrial revolution, the triumph of science and reason and also the United States of America, which took forward the British project into the modern age. The prosperity of Americans is built foursquare on globalism and US global leadership. But if American fascists win then their fate will be as imperial China's and American facsists know this. Many American fascists openly revel in promising misery and poverty as a punishment for the historic decadence of their countrymen. Some brotherly love.

I am comfortable to remain steadfast to the principles of the American Revolution in the face of the new American Tories who now decry these. It is indeed "the cause of all mankind". With Paine I am a citizen of the world. With Donne I see all mankind as of one author.

The post American world is uncertain. It may well be plunged into darkness at the behest of nationalists and narrow minded bigots everywhere. The fight for the future of humanity is on. Right now, humanity faces a choice: democracy and the rule of law, or totalitarianism and autocracy. American extremists make their preferences clear.

 

There is NO American left and those who claim it clearly haven't read Das Kapital!

The term Left is so broadly applied now that it refers to anyone who stands left of the politics of Genghis Khan!

The Right never attempt to define the term "Leftist" - they cant because they have no idea what being "Left" means...you only have to read the posts here to note this reality as fact!

And as for Liberals..they are so far to the right of Marx they are outa sight...and as was once so aptly declared "Liberal reformers stand ready at a moments notice to reform any and everything...except themselves"!

Cheers

 

LMAO. Oh, so clever. Central bankers, international corporations, crony capitalists in bed with market socialists, is this your "democracy" and "rule of law"? A world of serfdom you preach. People with not one say or inch of control over their own lives, but every few years get to vote for their pretend leadership. You have got be either one of the most naive or disingenuous posters I have ever witnessed. There is no nation on earth I wouldn't want to visit. Not a family I wouldn't want to meet. But apparently, without your grandiose regime in place we would end up killing each other. You can't please everyone. "Democracy" and "rule of law" can be as wicked as any dictator. The only difference between the worst versions of both sides of the coin is one is a dishonest slow death, while the other is up front and quick about it.

 

The lefties are trying to talk sense to the right wingers who have no cognitive capacity to know that they are backing ideas that are screwing themselves. Politicians know a mark when they see them, and they manipulate the foolish worshipers and obedient followers day after day. That is why the USA is not able to function, not because of the left or the right, but because of the stupid Americans who continue to vote for the same mistakes over and over and expect a different outcome.

FYI USA, you are screwing yourself over. Some of those relics in congress have had power over you longer than Chavez and Kadaffi has had power over their people.

 

Not sure who that was directed to or if it was just a general insult at everyone. lol. But I couldn't agree more. I would also like to add there are people in Washington who control the place and have more power than any elected official. "Wet behind the ears" politicians come in and have to get taught the process. I think it is that teaching that makes them all turn. As soon as a modern president is elected he gets a visit from a Kissinger or Greenspan type. Can't tell me that doesn't have any barring on why we feel we get the same no matter who we vote in.

 

The bogus "war for democracy" of which humanitarian interventionism is its fake alibi, rears its head once again. Now you have managed to get that of your chest, you can now resume your role as a scriptwriter for your warmongering hero Anthony Blair and his theoretically legitimizing underlings (Hitchens, Hari, Cohen, Aaronovitch et al) all of whom will no doubt be doubling their already lucrative lecture fees.

 

So what? Unless someone is frothing at the mouth Marxist they are in the poliical center? I don't care.

In America, we operate on a more narrow political spectrum than the rest of the world. I DON'T WANT TRUE "LEFTISTS" LIVING IN MY COUNTRY I WANT THEM DRIVEN OUT BY THE LASH LIKE WE DID IN THE 50'S!

If that is "fascism" so be it, fascists hate communists and I happen to share that ideological persuasion with them.

 

Welcome to the forum.

Of course there is an American left. There are people like Chomsky who see capitalist conspiracy everywhere. There are welfare socialists who disempower poor people through patronizing them as helpless victims. If you mean that there are no ideologically coherent leftists then I may agree with you. Finding a leftist who understands Marx is pretty difficult.

But I wasn't just talking about America anyway. My comments were aimed at a Venezualan leftist.

As to your comment that liberals are far to the right of Marx, why do you say that as if it is some sort of revelation? Marx was not a political party, so there are elements of Marxism that I find impressive. He was a profound thinker and a significant philosopher (to (*)(*)(*)(*) him with feint praise). But as a whole I see Marx as wrong and flawed and as a liberal I am miles to the right of him, firmly in the centre that I am. When Marx writes about the idealized kingdom of the bourgeoisie he is impressive:

For someone who was capitalism's most vehement opponent he was a great advocate of the revolutionary nature of capitalism vis a vis feudalism. Our new Tea Party fascists want to take us back to the pre Enlightenment days and substitute our science with prejudice and superstition.

But ultimately Marx's flaw can be found in your comment. Liberal capitalism has continuously reformed itself, over and over again. Now it faces the challenge of globalization where the values of bourgeois democracy are hindered by the feudal reactionaries who espouse American exceptionalism. Nationalism has always been capitalism's achilles heel. It is nationalism that will make America and China turn inward and send the capitalist system into an abyss.

Capitalism adapted in the West. It developed an ideology where everything wasn't about the naked cash nexus. The masses in the West are now highly educated compared to Chinese peasants who remain brutalized and backward. If you want to understand the revolutionary nature of capitalism that Marx continually spoke about, you should witness the utter brutality of Chinese feudalism which still crushes an eighth of the world's population.

Businesses in the West have to adopt cultures and policies of empowerment to make profit, as sweatshop economies are inadequate to generate growth. This is starting to be the case in China too in coastal cities, where the industrial revolution proceeds at ten times the pace of its English and American equivalents. China and India will only develop the means of production and exchange by developing the empowerment of their people. For this to happen in commerce, it must also happen in society. The emerging middle class must be nurtured, just as it was in the West. This will ensure continuous prosperity.

These imperatives will lead to political reform in China. Or the economic system will collapse. As Marx understood, superstition and Confucianism will set progress back, just as it did in 1494. But what Marx failed to understand was the resilience of capitalism to become more and more sophisticated, rational and civilized. Liberal democracy is the last best hope of mankind.

 

Ok so this is a classic anarchist argument. Maybe I misclassified you before. Sorry. The bit about the "grandiose regime" is strange, unless it's some "world government" paranoia. It's not my proposal.

Anarchism is an option. It comes with economic collapse, but that's OK. We all return to a craft economy, farmers and artisans all. Everything slows down. Technology declines. Medical care declines. But we are all ultimately happier and more self dependent.

It's an option. Not mine. It would develop into totalitarian tyranny rapidly.

To argue that there is no difference between liberal democracy and totalitarianism, as you do, is the typical spoiled churlishness of those who have enjoyed the benefits of freedom and have no inkling what real tyranny looks like. Get out, understand the brutal oppression of freedom in dictatorships. Then thank your lucky stars that you can post on here completely free of fear of sanction or abuse from the State you lambast.

I have always been in control of my life. I have had opportunity and have been rewarded for hard work. There is luck along the way and some people have it easier than me and some harder. But no-one stopped me making my way in the world. You have the same broad opportunity. It's called liberty. Billoions of people do not have this.

 

Get yourself elected. If you wanted to, you could. Stop being a victim.

You guys are not the Americans I know. They distinguish themselves from other nationalities by being the best people for getting things done. America is the "cannest do" nation in the world. What are you guys on?

 

Its difficult for vulgar Marxists to understand that dialectical materialism isn't a two dimensional process. History is about the interplay of many things. When bourgeois ideology - which abhors the murder and persecution of innocents and the oppression of those who fight for democracy - coincides with economic interest - the fact that Western societies need oil to sustain the way of life of everyone in that society (yes, even the leftists) - you get a liberal interventionist war. That's not bogus. That's just the way the base and superstructure work together when they combine ideological thinking with economic interests (any idea what I am talking about?).

Todays vulgar Marxists are so full of sentimental drivel and so inept at analytical thinking, that they have forgotten Rosa Luxemburg's paraphrasing of Spinoza's maxim: "try neither to laugh nor to cry but to understand human actions".

You got my contituency right though. I am a Euston Manifesto supporter. Have we talked before or am I getting better at explaining myself?

 

Ah, yeah, capitalism as "the end of history" tripe...You do know that this thesis has been widely discredited, right?

 

Is this vulgarity the best you have got? My argument is not the same. Fukarama's thesis was that it was all over. It clearly isn't.

Anyway, philosophy is not "discredited". That is an authoritarian view of ideas. People agree or disagree. That's it. The fact that someone else disagrees with Fukurama doesn't mean that I have to. This seems a very immature attitude to ideas that you are proposing.

Why don't you tell us your analysis. Marxism has a similar method to historical analysis, and regards communism as "the end of history".

Personally I think it is pretty stupid to make predictions but I am impressed by the concept that humans advance and that each epoch is better than the one before. This has been true so far. There have always been doom merchants who tell us we are about to fall of the end of the world. So far they have always been wrong.

 

No we haven't talked before but I read you like a book. At least Hari has done the decent thing and retracted his stance on Iraq. It's surprising that the warmongering Blair still has apologists for his blood-letting in the name of freedom and democracy still left in his locker. But for Euston hypocrites and their fanboys, it's never their sons and daughters who adorn the tin helmets and are placed in harms way, but rather it's the poor from the Camden estates that they bypass after having their regular drunken Euston Road binges who fight the good fight on their behalf. How does it feel to be an armchair liberal warrior?

 

Patronising little twerp aren't you?

 

Well well well...the final fig leaf finally falls.

Ladies and gentlemen...welcome to the Tea Party.
Welcome to intolerance.
Welcome to discrimination.
Welcome to hate.
Welcome to fear.
Welcome to intolerance.
Welcome to the "ANTI-AMERICANISM" of the Tea Party. Unfurled for us in all its self-centered, power-crazed glory.

I have been predicting the demise of this political oddity for some time now. My prediction has been that the T-Baggers themselves would get so extreme, that they would simply become unpalatable to sane people, thus setting the stage for the movement's demise.

So are all of you fair citizens of both right and left, ready to witness the slow and nonsensical fury and death of an almost "Terroristic" faux political movement? Are you ready to witness a significant number of fellow Americans writhe and scream as their dreams of a fascist/corporatist state for the ultra-wealthy (a la Pinochet), dies as a result of their own childish mentalities?

This will get ugly kids...but save me a front row seat. I want to enjoy every minute of this. I want to witness, first hand, the suicide of the Tea Party and its ill begotten political mumbo-jumbo.

Pass the popcorn please...this is gonna be good.

 

i am supports Caddafi too!

 

No genuine person would argue it is either private central bankers pimping us all, using one group of political elite who used to be against each but have now formed a monopoly of power, or anarchy.