Friday, October 17, 2003
FASCISM IS BACKMichael Ledeen discusses how Fascism is all around us:
It's hard to see fascism plain, because many of its essential features are obscured by its most infamous variation: German National Socialism. Hardly anybody knows that fascism had already been in power in Italy for more than a decade when Hitler seized Germany, and fewer still are aware that, in the late Twenties and early Thirties, there were so many fascist movements — from Latin America to Western, Central and Eastern Europe, from Great Britain to the Middle East — that Mussolini could realistically dream of organizing a fascist "international." Most of the fascist leaders who looked to Rome for inspiration were not racists, and did not share the Nazis' vision of a great empire ruled by a single führer. They were intensely nationalistic, and believed that each national unit would develop its own unique form of fascism, which they saw as a "third way" between capitalism and bolshevism, both of which they despised.
He goes on to explain the fascist nature of fundamentalist Islam. Indeed, their facsism is similar to Nazism in that it sets up a strawman as villain, and uses the same strawman.
The Jews. Fascists don't see political opponents as the loyal opposition, but as evil that must be stamped out. Thus, no relevant opposition in the middle east to the fascists practices of their leaders.
And keep your ears open, you'll see similar vilification of political opponents in the United States. Wild claims of conspiracy to kill the weak, the old and the poor. "I think [Republicans'] principal motivation [in purposefully running up the deficit] is to undo the pillars of the New Deal, particularly Medicare and Social Security, by making the budget deficit so big that those programs can't be sustained,"
said Howard Dean. He also "proposed a two-year, $100 billion "Fund to Restore America" that he said would add more than 1 million jobs." I'm not saying he's a fascist (although the left
says Bush is), but his government jobs program has precedent.
CURSESI'm not a big baseball fan and don't have my own team to root for, so obviously I was pulling for the Cubs and the Red Sox in each LCS. After seeing each blow their leads (and the Cubs blew a two game lead!), I came to the realization that, not only are these teams cursed, but that they in fact deserve to lose. Whether it's a fan unintentionally sabotaging a team or a manager unable to see that his pitcher is finished, they found a way to fulfill their ancient prophesies.
Now, I can return to football, where my Tar Heels are 1-5 and my Eagles are 2-3 (and it may be about time to start wondering if the Eagles are cursed as well).
FAIR AND BALANCED, AN EXAMPLEFoxNews begins a story on the global warming debate
as follows:
No one knows for sure whether the Earth’s climate is changing appreciably or whether any such change is due to humans. One thing that certainly is heating up, though, is the global warming litigation environment.
Here's the beginning of a
Reuters story.
About 160,000 people die every year from side-effects of global warming ranging from malaria to malnutrition and the numbers could almost double by 2020, a group of scientists said on Tuesday.
The study, by scientists at the World Health Organization (WHO) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said children in developing nations seemed most vulnerable.
A couple of London doctors? Are there no climatologists? And it just goes on like that. How about the
Associated Press:
California will join as many as nine other states in suing the federal Environmental Protection Agency, to make sure the agency can't interfere with efforts to control greenhouse gases, Gov. Gray Davis, said Friday.
The announcement comes the week after Davis and his Democratic counterparts from Washington and Oregon laid out a plan to combat global warming, and after the federal agency in August said it lacks authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from motor vehicles.
Just a small lesson in how assumed facts in stories can constitute biased reporting.
CREATING "NEWS" AROUND LIESCBS thinks it has a blockbuster because a former State Department
official thinks that Colin Powell puffed up his UN presentation on Saddam's badness. Again, rewritting history, without challenge:
Greg Thielmann tells Correspondent Scott Pelley that at the time of Powell’s speech, Iraq didn’t pose an imminent threat to anyone – not even its own neighbors. “…I think my conclusion [about Powell’s speech] now is that it’s probably one of the low points in his long distinguished service to the nation,” says Thielmann.
No one ever said that Saddam did pose an "imminent threat" and President Bush said specifically that we should act
before the treat becomes imminent (see more from
Andrew Sullivan on imminence). Thielmann then complains that the intelligence that he analyzed and collected didn't define US policy, as though his little office is the clearinghouse for all information relevant to US foreign policy. What a joke. It's nice that 60 Minutes II is going to give him some airtime tonight to whine that he didn't have a veto on American national security policy.
HE WAS IN VIETNAM, YOU KNOWJohn Kerry, Vietnam veteran, thinks it is ridiculous to exploit your Vietnam (the war in which John Kerry served) service while running for President. At least, he thought that when someone else was using it against his preferred candidate. From
The Hill:
A decade ago, however, Kerry rose in the Senate on two separate occasions to decry presidential candidates who used their military service record as a qualification for the highest office.
On Feb. 27, 1992, Kerry defended then presidential candidate Bill Clinton against an attack by his Democratic rival Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.). As the primary season unfolded, Kerrey, who lost part of his leg in Vietnam, had peppered Clinton with uncomfortable questions about whether the Arkansan had evaded the draft.
Kerry hit back at his Senate colleague, saying: “I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into the campaign, and that it has been inserted in what I feel to be the worst possible way… What saddens me most is that Democrats, above all those who shared the agonies of that generation, should now be re-fighting the many conflicts of Vietnam in order to win the current political conflict of a presidential primary.”
I guess he felt that way while in throw-my-buddy's-medals-over-the-White-House-fence mode. What a loser. Did you know he fought in Vietnam?
Thanks to reader identified as Marblehead for pointing this out.
POLLSBush job
approval up, and John Edwards still not a serious candidate.
Almost
three-quarters of Baghdad residents don't want U.S. troops to leave in the next few months. And that's Baghdad, home to Saddam's government. I suspect the numbers are even higher outside of the Baghdad/Tikrit area. There's less
anti-American sentiment in Baghdad than in Paris or the average Howard Dean rally.
NEWSWEEK'S FAIR AND BALANCED LIMBAUGH COVERAGENewsweek, responding to a story by the leader in investigative journalism, the
National Enquirer,
covers Rush Limbaugh this week. And it is far from fair and balanced. A sampler:
Rush Limbaugh has always had far more followers than friends
That's the first sentence, and it is true of absolutely every single celebrity. But Newsweek made its point, Rush has no friends!
But the mockery was instantaneous. Liberal mouth Al Franken (author of “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot”) hit the airwaves to relish Limbaugh’s greatest hits of hypocrisy.
Are "greatest hits of hypocrisy" Newsweek's words or Franken's? Probably Newsweek's.
and virtually every newspaper dredged up this 1995 quote from Rush: “Too many whites are getting away with drug use. The answer is to ... find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them, and send them up the river.”
But the media's been telling me that Rush is racist!
The fall of a moralist is always a great American spectacle. The Elmer Gantry story—the righteous preacher who turns out to be a letch and a boozer—has a special resonance in a nation that postures as morally superior but enjoys sin. Nothing entertains (or instructs in the essentials of human nature) like hypocrisy on a grand scale. When Bill Bennett, best-selling author of “The Book of Virtues,” was outed as a compulsive gambler, and evangelist Jim Bakker was caught embezzling from his Praise the Lord empire, the lamentations of the true believers were drowned out by the snickers of the knowing.
And what about the self-righteous feminist and champion of women's issues, hero of NOW, and womanizer Bill Clinton?
The man behind the curtain is not the God of Family Values but a childless, twice-divorced, thrice-married schlub whose idea of a good time is to lie on his couch and watch football endlessly.
Schlub?
Granted, Limbaugh’s act has won over, or fooled, a lot of people.
Or fooled? Is that how Newsweek describes leftists?
he is the darling of Red State, Fly-Over America.
Is that the stench of elitism? Can't be. Newsweek then psychoanalyzes Rush by quoting Maureen Dowd. Really, I'm not making this up.
“You need to make an outline. You need some data to support your assertions,” [Rush's college communications professor] told young Limbaugh. “Frankly, he wouldn’t do those things.”
Implication is obvious, and supports the liberal view about conservative ideology.
and briefly on the dole, a detail Limbaugh overlooks when he rants against welfare
Way to simplify a complex issue. Brilliant. Especially since Limbaugh used welfare to pull himself up, not as politicians hope it will be used, to create a permanent underclass that is beholden to government generosity.
Limbaugh had a lighter, more satiric touch, though his gibes at the helpless could be a little crude. (He once suggested staging a “Homeless Olympics” with events like “the 10-meter shopping-cart relay, the Dumpster dig and the hop, skip and trip.”)
Good one, Rush.
Despite his fervent moralizing, he smoked a little pot and watched a little porn (as he has publicly admitted).
So, perfection is required?
His self-absorption made dating difficult.
Source, former girlfriends. He's been maried to Marta since 1994. Ask her.
(despite his on-air bombast, Limbaugh is known for his politeness, even gentleness at times)
Well, that was nice.
According to his ex-housekeeper Wilma Cline, Limbaugh was bullying her into providing ever-larger supplies of painkiller pills at the time.
So, Newsweek, where did Wilma get the pills? Did you ask?
had suggested that the NFL had been pushing Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb because of his race, not his talent
Wrong, he suggested that the
media overrated McNabb because of his race. Did you see yesterday's Dallas-Philadelphia game?
Limbaugh has given himself 30 days at a treatment center; medical experts say that truly freeing himself from addiction could take much longer
Could.
"From a moral standpoint, there’s a difference between people who go out and seek a high and get addicted and the millions of Americans dealing with pain who inadvertently get addicted,” Bauer told NEWSWEEK.
Buried, at the end.
Limbaugh’s long-running act as a paragon of virtue is over. Now the question is whether he can make a virtue out of honesty.
Paragon of virtue? I don't remember that. Can he make a virtue of honesty? He has for years. And I thought Evan Thomas did better work than this.
SNLAfter suggesting
on Thursday that Carl Weathers would be the next
Predator actor to be elected governor, it was gratifying to see Action Jackson himself appear on Saturday Night Live in a skit based on the same premise.
So, NBC, where do I pick up my check?
