The true face of the Left - Chavez supports Gaddafi

LOL. Yeah, I'll just go do that. Your insults prove nothing other than you have no clue what it is to be a working class American.

 

He certainly doesn't. In all probability, he has never encountered a working class person in his entire life. When I did my masters degree, I was surrounded by these kinds of middle-class stuffy liberals (ie 'liberals' in the UK sense) most of whom were only too willing for poor working class people to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan on their behalf. Frankly, these kind of apologists for imperialism, make me sick to my stomach.

 

SM is a neocon. Nice try. He is as left as the left. As elitist as the left. As statist as the left. As pro-globalism as the left. The only difference is the average modern leftist thinks those with more should pay more taxes comparative to the wealth they control where neocons think the upper and middle class should pay for the big government that has been created.

 

Who made Chavez the representative of liberals?

Giant straw man.

 

Have you read Jacques Barzun's From Dawn To Decadence? Western civilization is decadent and will pass from the scene as a living and vital culture. I am White American, but my family is Chinese/Eurasian/Vietnamese American. Confucianism is a healthy approach to raising a family.

Your views will suffer the same fate as Hellenism. They will be swept away except for pockets here and there. Accept your karma. The West will not survive in multi-cultural form. Western culture won't even have a Byzantine phase.

I do not admit that American conservatives are the enemies of democracy and the rule of law. How preposterous. If you wish to maintain this supposition I am happy to debate this issue with you. So walk me through your analysis so that I might scrutinize it.

American conservatism is multi-faceted. It is a coalition like most movements. I have transited the entire ideological spectrum from Marxism to the point where I am today. I am a radical conservative who American leftists can't negotiate with, compromise with, reason with, beg, implore, beseech or argue. The forces and processes of history have arrived on American shores like the Perfect Storm. The choice is stark. It is a zero sum game. Either American Leftism wins across the board and conservatism disappears as an ideology, or conservatism will sweep leftist ideology away. There is one other possibility. America disappears as a united polity and is replaced by successor states.

American conservatism of my sort is no threat to the world, but is a mortal threat to American leftism. I once subscribed to the Realist School of Thought in American foreign policy. Now I am a neo-Isolationist.

The tragic fact you must accept is that without American power your desired Enlightenment philosophy cannot stand before the forces who oppose it. I have not embraced darkness. I have embraced political nihilism at home, and schadenfreude abroad.

 

Heroclitus,

Here's an article you may find of interest. It's about the triumph of a race and culture.

http://www.newgeography.com/content/002397-inside-the-sinosphere

 

Heroclitus wrote - "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."

I totally disagree with you - there are those who wear Che Guevara T-Shirts and eat at Mcdonalds, those that claim a higher notion of social awareness and justice but act only within the political boundaries of the Capitalist state (ever beholden to its whims), indeed some, like "Chomsky" pander at the heel of Marxism and surrender their interest to the guiding and underpinning morality on which the entrie edifice of Marxist Political and economic prinicples are based while steadily emptying champagne bottles as the mass of humanity starves. If revolutionary action has been worn away to nothing more than rampant and ragged men wandering the globe offering a moral defenses and justiofications of and for Altruism as a fundamental guiding principle then it can be fairly claimed that the Left has been reduced to a hypocrisy. Books sales and appearance fees sustain the travel!

Marxism is not only a cold economic theory, nor is it simply a historical testament to the suffering of man, it is not just a moral compass for action that delivers social equality and justice - it is a combination of all of these streams of political and social awareness and understanding - but what makes the leftist is (As you say) the ability to form a coherent and rational understanding while dedicating a lives in altruistic endeavor to the liberation of man from every form of political, social and economic oppression - on a global scale!. It is based on these views that I make the claim - there is no left in the USA - only those who sit left of the extreme right!

 

Wow, the personal venom. I try and aim my venom at a thought process or attitude. You try and aim it at my social choices. And you are so wide of the mark. I am an active participant in the Chinese Industrial Revolution - a complete lackey of Chinese capitalism. I am in no armchair.

Of course the fact that you can recognize my ideology broadly is not a weakness in me, as you allude. It demonstrates that I am talking to someone who is reasonably informed and that I have expressed myself clearly enough for them to understand me. Nonetheless the Pharaseeical tone of your reply is both ordinarily offensive and interesting. I am fascinated at how the Left approach political analysis as Cromwellian religious zealots, furiously moralizing and judging people's personal worth from their high horses. The stereotyping is all part of that. It wasn't a great feature of Marx, or Plekhanov or Engels to indulge in this petty bourgeois moralizing. Their writings were clinical and big picture. Lenin did go in for it, but he was just a nasty person. But even Trotsky was fond of setting himself above this kind of bigoted nastiness that you go in for here - the final page of My Life where I think he quotes Proudhon would be a fine example.

Your analysis is of course as interesting as it is inaccurate - as most personal stereotypes are. I have members of the military in my family - NCOs as well in case the inverted snobbery kicks into your response. My friends also have military personnel in their families. Soldiers know why they fight. They don't whinge on about being poor little victims like your patronizing middle class picture of estate boys press ganged into being slaughtered.

You love this protestant curtain twitching don't you? The psychogical need leftists have for this petty moralizing is fascinating. It's deeply Stalinist of course. And totally petty bourgeois - middle class numpties obsessed with projecting a proletarian image as they study for their master's degrees. I have mixed with people of incredible wealth and spent years living in areas of incredible poverty. I have learned in my life that real proletarians never wallow in their own faeces, as you do here, are overwhelmingly devoid of the self pity and defeatism that you project and once given opportunity are capable of the most incredible achievements.

As an activist in the 1984/5 miners strike I saw the incredible social entrepreneurial skills of working class people under the most awesome pressure. I slept in their houses, ate at their tables and stood side by side with them on the picket lines against a reactionary conservative government that was the bitterest enemy of true liberalism. Seeing the petty jealousies and personal emnity (your posts remind me of this) that corroded the ideals of the left, I soon realized that socialism could never be a vehicle that would liberate and empower such elite men and women as British miners and their families. It would only ever do what it had done to Chinese and Russian miners - utterly brutalizing and destoying their health and wellbeing. Only equality of opportunity can enable people to realize their potential. Socialist organizations always degenerate into cesspits of petty envy and interpersonal animosity, as your nasty posts quite superbly show.

So look at these morally pure and wholesome leftists in our world today. Oh, how they wail and gnash their teeth at the oppression of the poor and exploited. But when someone comes along and imposes modernity on a brutalized and backwards society, whether it is the USSR or the USA in Afghansitan, then our moral stalwarts change sides. Firstly the say that we should do nothing, for as capitalist nations our motives can never be pure, and so it is far better to leave people under tyranny than save them from it for the wrong motives. That position is disgusting enough. But then we see - and we have seen it on here - the vile spectacle of leftists taking sides with these medieval thugs on the basis that they are some sort of freedom fighters. It is then only possible to cognotively process such obscenity by remembering that these vermin are in the same political tradition as those who murdered a hundred million people in the name of progress.

In the name of the Afghan Resistance of American and British imperialism our wholesome lefties - in the warm protection of their campuses where they study their masters degrees and enjoy their bourgeois liberty - whooppee and coo at the glorious acts of warfare by their new Talibani allies. Now the Left - in a parody of the rightist hypocrisy of "mine enemies enemy is my friend" - make common cause with those who cut off noses, rape young girls, hang political opponents from bridges and stone people to death.

Could there be a more reprehensible form of scum, a more loathsome stinking turd, than the leftist, in his university ivory tower, sitting in his armchair, protected by a bourgeois judiciary from the gulag or the laogai which he would undoubtedly be in should he be a citizen of a socialist country, feeling smug and self satisfied that his new allies have scored a blow against the military forces of his own country?

 

USA produce the green wrappers and abrams tanks only...

 

Ok so your version of Marxism Leninism is the only ideology that can be termed "left". I am sure in time you well tell us what miniscule 'revolutionary party" you belong to. Then we can all marvel at your analysis of proletarian bonapartism or state capitalism or other angels dancing on the head of a needle.

I love the bold bit - the religious zealot bit. It says a lot. Marxists - when Engels used to ride out with the Cheshire Hunt for example - used to focus on ideas and the big picture. Now the focus is all on "altruistic endeavour".

Political moonies. That's the modern revolutionary left. Sell all you have, give it to the Party and live a monastic existence of splendid moral purity and virtue.

I prefer life.

 

You write like a Marxist. I do have to be careful as the only people left who seem to analyze with the vigour of nineteenth century philosophers seem to be on the Right (mainly neocons which you clearly are not). And they seem to be the only intelligent people on the Right as well. Taught to think by a school of leftists that is now extinct.

It can be seductive. I don't know where to start, but if you are serious you could start by critiqueing my view of liberalism - it was a warm and cuddly version and not too profound - to define your position vis a vis that.

I don't know what you mean by "the American left". I may or may not fall into that category (I would say that I am centre Left so I don't know how you would define my views or why). My position is for democracy and the rule of law. If you agree with that then how are we so diametrically opposed?

 

Heroclitus wrote - "Ok so your version of Marxism Leninism is the only ideology that can be termed "left". I am sure in time you well tell us what miniscule 'revolutionary party" you belong to. Then we can all marvel at your analysis of proletarian bonapartism or state capitalism or other angels dancing on the head of a needle.

I love the bold bit - the religious zealot bit. It says a lot. Marxists - when Engels used to ride out with the Cheshire Hunt for example - used to focus on ideas and the big picture. Now the focus is all on "altruistic endeavour".

Political moonies. That's the modern revolutionary left. Sell all you have, give it to the Party and live a monastic existence of splendid moral purity and virtue.

I prefer life."



Well sir, not only have you engaged in a venomous attack on me personally but you have positioned yourself as the official arbiter of defined political philosophies...above question and beyond interpretation. Good for you - I champion self confidence, clearly you have nurtured it carefully!


let me correct you on a number of assertions you have made re me..without an attached personal attack..

1/ I am not a Marxist but still claim to be the only man alive that has read all three volumes of Das Kapital twice! My understanding of Marxism (Not Marxist Leninism) is not derived from personal ambition, interest or prejudice but as a result of critical analysis and years of study. Your use of the term left is so broad as to be inconceivable. Indeed so broad as to encompass anything left of center (Center not defined). Let me remind you that a pig in a stable isn't a horse!

2/ I am member of NO revolutionary party and remain absolutely non aligned. I take it as a personal insult that you would attempt to deride and castigate me by making such a false claim before a cast of thousands. It speaks volumes about you and not a thing about me.

3/Altruism = concern for the welfare of others as a priority over self interest. This is an ideal that I champion. You can hold whatever contemptible view you wish in relation to its social value and engage in any critique that serves your own sense of identity and morality. I won't have you determining my guiding principles and characterize them in a discriminating way because your preference is a reach for something other in another direction. This reflects your prejudice alone and nothing more!

4/ Reaching for the moral high-ground is not a claim of self righteousness as you so wrongly claim - it is a preference over what I describe as moral mediocrity. By reference to your claim "I prefer life", I can highlight your admission that a natural conflict exists between serving moral interest and interacting with lifes' realities. The bridge between, desired by so many, is not an effort to live out a life of "Splendid moral purity" but rather a reach for ideal over mediocrity!

My best wishes to you.

 

Such opinions can only come about from a closed mind. I respect a fair amount of your postings, but this is one area where I think you are entirely mistaken. Indeed, this appears to me the perfect example of how America in its entirety has forsaken reason and temperance. Permit me a bit of a tangent, and I'll explain my reasoning further.

We have, as is well-known and well-documented, a deplorably undereducated population. However, the main issue we face in this regard far surpasses mathematical ineptitude and the like. Having never been taught how to think -- but, rather taught what to think, by a variety of mediums -- the people of this nation have become little more than humanoid lemmings. This issue isn't just endemic to the bourgeoisie, either -- our elites have an astounding intellectual deficit.

Nearly all issues have taken on a polar form, in one way or another, and their various messengers and promoters are equally diametrically opposed in function. However, this need not be the case. The right does indeed have some valid points, as does the left. The fact that ideas coming from both sides of the aisle have become so absurdly stigmatized by the parties opposite is the reason nothing sensible can get accomplished. We are currently at a point where loyalty to an ideology has taken on greater import than loyalty to the national well-being, and this will destroy us if left to fester unchecked.

As it stands, the party fringes have come to dominate political affairs and are, by and large, sputtering out nonsensical, hardline policies that have been given little sensical thought. Meanwhile, the moderate American population at large has absolutely no idea what to make of the situation and is flailing about as if it were some manner of decapitated poultry. Americans have become so accustomed to people thinking for them that they've no methods by which to even digest the general situation, let alone debate and forward thoughtful courses of action that pertain to it. They see two forces gathering on opposite ridges, whilst they are stuck wallowing in their own ignorance betwixt them both in the valley below. In the end, it will be the average American who is massacred by the impending battles between the totalitarian left and the totalitarian right, which have taken hold in this country.

Now, my point in all this is simple: an utter rejection of any principles from the opposing sides of the current American political system makes one part of the problem, as opposed to part of the solution. To partake in such an action is to be counted amongst the ignorant and the unenlightened and to act as a soulless automaton. It reveals a total inability to think independently about or apply the well-worn and time-tested principles of reason to a particular affair, and instead demonstrates the mindless acceptance of an idea or stance which feels familiar or comfortable... or worse, an idea that simply sounds nice.

For example, I believe you stated recently in another thread that government investment in renewable resources should not be given one inkling of consideration, simply due to the fact that some on the "left" supported the idea. How is that in any way logical, let alone feasible? Stop buying into the party line.

Certain leftist principles are not incompatible with the United States; indeed, our country was founded by left-wing radicals. Our founding fathers believed in earnest in the idea that the government can work for the benefit of the people, as demonstrated by their investment in the public's education. Investments in public health or sustainable energy are no different. The government is able to pool resources in a way no solitary man is able to and can do a tremendous amount of good if used in targeted, accountable ways.

Similarly, there are many conservative points which have plenty of merit. The idea of a smaller federal government, a lesser tax burden on small business owners, and so forth.

If Americans continue on with blind adherence to an ideology or party, this country is doomed. There can, indeed, be a happy medium. A certain mix of cross-party policies, often times in unorthodox ways, would revitalize this country. The realization of this only requires that one opens his eyes -- a task far too daunting for many, it would appear.

This is, of course, nothing new. The Tea Party is the Conservative answer to the boisterous, belligerent hipsters that the "Liberals" (I detest misusing that appellation as such) are so keen to employ. (Granted, the Tea Partiers are more well-behaved in their demonstrations -- mainly because they are more aged -- but their mannerisms belie their intent.) They are two sides of the same coin, these crusaders: in word they promote tolerance and freedom of choice, yet in deed they would force their persuasions upon the masses without a single afterthought.

 

And if there is one thing the extremes are correct in, it is this. The United States has no mandate to be a global police force, nor does the EU. Universal truths are insidious lies, and this missionary nonsense only serves to feed egos. Make no mistake, any Western "humanitarian" interventions that have occurred are the result of America wishing to make its muscle felt and Europe wishing to make itself militarily relevant.

Yet you, supportive of these expeditions, decry in the most charlatan of manners "moral purity and virtue" whilst extolling Christian dogma -- a Pharisee if there ever were one!

As an aside, I suppose I am an un-American American. For you see, neither am I Christian, nor do I feel any particular fraternity with the majority of people abroad... Apologies if I've made your pigeonholing something of a chore.

 

I have to drink some beer now, but I will return at my convenience. In the meantime, all of these posts remind me of the words of a philosoper and polemicist:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjzkG_QeJfA&feature=fvst"]Billy Preston Nothing From Nothing - YouTube[/ame]

 

I write like a political nihilist. In real life I would be an existentialist if not for family and friends.

All intellectual ferment in America is on the right. Ideas are like straight razors.

The American left is not liberal. It places little value on liberty as an ideal. It is too heavily influenced by a fusion of Liberation Theology, Revolutionary Egalitarianism, Doctrinaire Multiculturalism and Marxism without even realizing it. It uses sophistry to characterize its essential dogma as "freedom from want."

My views seem dialectic. Perhaps they are. I am a Rejectionist. I think this is the first time that term has been used in connection with the American right.

I believe in the ideal of liberty on an almost absolutist basis. I have no problem with the idea of equality of opportunity because I see it as a corollary to the ideal of individual liberty. The American left believes in equality of outcome which is anathema to individual liberty.

There has always been a tension between the concepts of individual liberty and equality. The tension has caused a chasm in the American body politic. A new heaven and earth must be born before the American right and left will coexist again in ideological peace.

Your posts indicate a deep faith in Enlightenment values and the spread of those values throughout the world. Ten years ago I would have agreed with you almost completely. My world view has changed fundamentally since then. Opinion is informed by experience.

If you could magically wave a wand and summon forth traditional Western Enlightenment values it would be wonderful for all of humanity. But it is not to be. Your don't have a way to get from here to there. That is the problem.

The Chinese reject the international order as conceived by Western intellectuals. That was evident in their cavalier attitude displayed at the Copenhagen Global Warming Circus in December 2009, and their absurd interpretation of the Law of the Sea Treaty. The Chinese will reinterpret the international order. Think of Confucianism fused with Leninism.

Meanwhile, the engine of the American economic and political systems are burdened by overpaid and undereducated workers, a broken public school system which warehouses students, and an inexhaustible torrent of ignorance and poverty moving north from Latin America. Large parts of the USA are now part of the Third World just as much as Inner Mongolia or Xinjiang.

If trouble were money America would have lots of friends.

 

The only people more doomed than the Americans are the Russians. Two dying empires.

 

The Chinese are going to eat your lunch and screw your significant other. Then they will persuade you that it was all in your own interest.

 

If it were not for your well crafted prose I would bite your head off.

I have learned that it is necessary to understand one's opponent if one is to overcome that opponent. Some call it putting one's self in the shoes of another. If one is not capable of thinking like and understanding one's opponent one is fated to be surprised over and over again. Someone famous once said that if one understands one's self and one's enemy one need never fear the outcome of a hundred battles.

I used to be a Marxist at one time long ago. I have traveled the entire philosophical spectrum. I understand the left in America. That is why I am completely uncompromising.

Your ideas were once valid. So were the ideas of Kerensky until Lenin came around. The American middle has no ideas. It swings back and forth between left and right like a pendulum. The struggle between left and right permits no compromise.

The only way to defeat the tactics of Saul Alinsky is to adopt them. He was a great thinker who appreciated the importance of Lucifer.

I am a political nihilist in a post-american landscape. I am not here to attempt to restore the past. I am like the Forlorn Hope of the Napoleanic Wars.

Renewable energy would be a good idea, and in a perfect world we would work together to develop all forms of energy for a prosperous America. But I know the left. They seek to transform my kind out of existence. Instead the country will go over the event horizon.

Do you think me a little too harsh? Well, I wasn't always like this. As I mentioned in a previous post on this thread, opinion is informed by experience.

 

Got that off your chest then? Leaving aside your waffle, you conveniently side-stepped the question why it is that warmongering hawks like you are happy for other people's sons and daughters to risk their lives fighting Pashtun tribes on your behalf? How do you square your hypocrisy with your conscience? If you are committed to the cause then why not put on the tin helmet yourself and fight the good fight? Of course you won't because you are a hypocrite who cries crocodile tears at the sight of others people's sons and daughters coming home in coffins whilst not having the courage of your own convictions by enlisting yourself. So why didn't you enlist for Iraq or Afghanistan?

Because I am opposed to imperialist adventures in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, naturally means that I support tyrannical regimes? Hmmm, with that kind of logic, is it any wonder that you are Blair and Euston-set fanboy? It is the same twisted logic with which the Zionists and their apologists accuse those who oppose the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine as being anti-semites. If you insist on creating strawmen arguments, you really need to be a tad more convincing.

As an apologist for imperialism, you and your fellow Euston travellers have a lot in common with the Right in the sense that you adhere to the 'democracy' versus 'barbarism' polarity. In other words, as you have made clear, the civilizing mission of the major powers is to bring democracy where the indigenous people are too benighted or religiously blind to achieve it for themselves. Since the demise of 'communism' the favoured polarity became 'democracy versus dictatorship'. (to be continued).

 

You don't know your enemy. You are doomed to be surprised. You have no way of dealing with people like me. You think Heroclitus is your enemy. You have no way of dealing with people who are prepared to kill the country in order to defeat you.

 

Chavez isn't a Stalinist. The modern western liberal is the retarded cousin of the leftist. They are spineless and ignorant. Your lovefest post on your own ideology was sickening. Typical postmodern liberal bull(*)(*)(*)(*). Real left forever.

 

Part 2

....'New Hitler's', variously Milosevic, Saddam Hussein or Syria's Assad, would have to embrace democracy or face the consequences. The argument is that such regimes are so dastardly, the capacities of its people so limited, that recourse to armed intervention by the major powers in order to impose democracy was justified. Academic Fred Halliday as well as hypocrites like Hitchens, Cohen, Aaronovitch and Hari have all taken this path in response to the first Gulf War, the Balkan and Afghan wars and the invasion of Iraq.

The democracy argument can only be sustained if one believes:

1) that the major powers are genuinely in the business of pursuing a democratic agenda.

2) that democracy can be imposed at the point of a gun, and

3) that the people of the country concerned are not capable of achieving democracy themselves.

Assessing the major powers' commitment to democracy requires an examination both of democracy in the imperial countries themselves and of their record of supporting democracy abroad. It is remarkable that the democratic rhetoric of the leaders of the major powers has reached a new pitch just at the time when the health of democracy in their own countries is possibly worse than it has been at any point since the inter-war years. This is not to diminish the real difference between the degree of political freedom in parliamentary democracies and that in authoritarian regimes. The pint I'm making here is a different one: those governments most insistent on propagating the idea that they are fighting for other peoples freedom are the same governments that are presiding over the erosion of freedom in their own countries. Conversely those within the anti-war movement (the genuine left) that have most resisted the 'wars for democracy' have been in the forefront of defending democracy and civil liberties in their own countries.

So this argument speaks to the intention and motivation of the 'pro-war democrats'. It questions whether those who move so quickly to limit freedom at home can really be as enthusiastic as they claim about freedom abroad.

Part 3 to follow.

 

Part 3.

Leaving the above aside, is it possible to achieve democarcy at gun point?

The balance of historical experience sugests it is not.Modern democarcy is the product of revolution. Even where transition from authoritarianism to parliamentary democracy has not involved great popular mobilizations, as in post-fascist Spain, the process has certainly had nothing to do with military intervention by major powers.

In fact, the intervention of major powers has been most frequently used to try and stifle democracy and anti-colonial movements such as the British in India, the British, French and Israeli aborted Suez invasion, the CIA coup that installed the Shah of Iran, the Vietnam war, the British support of the white settler regime in Zimbabwe, the US support for South African apartheid, Pinochet's coup against the democratically elected government of Allende in Chile etc etc....And today Western support for dictators and authoritarian regimes continues unabated.

Above all else the catastrophic failure of the invasion of Iraq proves that democracy cannot be delivered by cruise missile. The record in Afghanistan is no more encouraging.

So if the motivations and the experience of the democratic warriors speak against occupation as an effective method of spreading democracy, what of the third argument: we have to act because the people of the country have no capacity to end dictatorship by their own efforts?

This is a particularly mendacious argument in at least two of the cases of post-Cold War conflict -Iraq and Serbia.

At the end of the day, invasion by the major powers is no substitute for the people concerned revolting against their oppressors and setting up their own democratic institutions as they see fit. The reason, ultimately, is straightforward: those who do the liberating tend to do the ruling afterwards.

 

Huh?? Well I guess you know what you are babbling about?