Continued from the Deep Throat thread

My latest tangent has nothing to do with Mark W. Felt, so I started another thread.


Was World War II worth it?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/images/BUCHANAN(COLOR)2.jpg
By: Patrick J. Buchanan


It's easy for a loutish idealogue such as PJB to dump on FDR and Winston Churchill.  If old Pat thinks he could have done better than either man with Stalin at Yalt, his arrogance is risible.  Well, his arrogance is risible anyway!

Richard Haas used the term "coercive utopia" to describe the communist and fascist tyrannies prevalent in the 20th century.  I find "coercive utopia" a concise two-word description for cruel methods with which dictors from Mussolini to Mao enforced their ideologies.  None of these "coercive utopias" became  a beacon anyone wants to follow in the 21st century. 
They were full of bloodshed, gulags, paranoia, lies, espionage, mass poverty, and unimaginable human suffering.  That's why it saddens and frightens me daily to see America slouching toward "coercive utopia." 
Ronald Reagan is Lenin to today's Republican party analog to Stalin.  Adam Smith is to the Chicago School of economics (Friedman, Stigler et al.) what Karl Marx was to the Bolsheviks.
In both cases a great economist's ideas were bent and corrupted beyond recognition.  Milton Friedman distorted Smith's "invisible hand" into a free-for-all for greedy businessmen.  The Leninist "dictatorship of the proletariat" became the autocracy of Joe Stalin, whereas not even Friedman bought into Arthur Laffer's "Laffer Curve." 
And yet the very worst ideas of the Soviets and the very worst ideas of the Reagan Reaction came to dominate their respective economies. 
The Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists and other failed communist utopians enforced a strict atheism, substituting the cult of the personality for the deity.  This survives in Kim Jung Il's North Korea.
The "Reaganistas," as I call 'em, use a blend of militant patriotism and Christian Fundamentalism ("christo-fascism" to coin a phrase) to dope the folks with macho nationalism and that knock-out tincture of patriarchal fear-love only Evangelical Christianity can achieve.  It works.  Americans by the tens of millions are now "born again Christians" and confuse greedy Spartanism with Holiness.  They don't know any better than to let the corporate titans trick them into voting against their self-interest.
They love to listen to the Rush Limbaughs, Pat Buchanans, and Pat Robertsons proclaim about "freedom" and "liberty," yet they despise the free and the liberal.
I don't remember the exact quote from "Easy Rider," but Jack Nicholson's character, the lawyer George Hanson says it: "The establishment will go on and on about freedom, but when they actually see a free person, it scares the hell out of them."  Something to that effect.

American society has yet to become a "coercive utopia," but the Right is working on it.  The Reagan Reaction has worked miraculously.  It has made the rich richer beyond their expectations in 1980.  But it's not enough.  It's not enough to fool some of the people some of the time.  Since they can't fool all of the people, they will have to use force.  They're in too deep and they want too much.

As Kevin Phillips points out, a democratic republic cannot survive if three percent of the population controls ninety-five percent of the wealth.  We are headed in that direction.  The Bushies want us all to worship the free market, even though their "free market" is a naked lie.  That's where the Christian Right Guard comes in.  They tell us we are morally obliged to worship the bogus free market.  Yet millions of Americans are too smart to believe either.  As the maldistribution of wealth becomes ever more skewed, the restlessness and rage will rise among the unfooled.  If history teaches us anything it's that power seized is not willingly given up.  Eventually, the U.S. government will force silence and conformity upon dissenters with the barrel of a gun!  Hence a coercive utopia!

Pat Buchanan will never part ways with the corporate Right no matter how bitter his rhetoric gets.  He's rich and the Christian Right is married to the prevailing corporate fascism.  Pat Buchanan is a quaint relic of your grandfather's conservatism.

Sorry to say this... but Pat Buchanan is a douche bag anyway...  ::)

I agree with Patrick Buchanan probably 95% of the time, but I feel he can go to far sometimes (like with that column, which is why I quoted MaxwellSmart's "big mouth" comment.)  I feel he is a true conservative and has real conservative principals like secure borders and opposition to big business sell-out free trade pacts like NAFTA and CAFTA.  But at the same time, this thread is just a rant and not really a response to what Mr. Buchanan wrote or what Mr. Buchanan stands for.

Sorry to say this... but Pat Buchanan is a douche bag anyway...  ::)



How so?

I think that everyone who reads this board knows my opinion of anyone who "agrees with Pat Buchanan 95% of the time", so I will keep my big mouth shut on that score.  As to PJB himself, he, like Limbaugh, Hanity, and the rest of them can hardly be considered rational, educated, thoughtful beings.  They are all a bunch of neo-fascists.

How so?


I could go on about it all day, let's just say Pat Buchanan and his "buddies" scare the crap out of me.

I think that everyone who reads this board knows my opinion of anyone who "agrees with Pat Buchanan 95% of the time", so I will keep my big mouth shut on that score.  As to PJB himself, he, like Limbaugh, Hanity, and the rest of them can hardly be considered rational, educated, thoughtful beings.  They are all a bunch of neo-fascists.

Pat Buchanan has fivefold more brains than Limbaugh and Hannity put together.  But that ain't saying much.

Yeah, it's a rant, a rant about our liberty going down the toilet on account of those who wear "liberty" on their sleeves!

Pat Buchanan has fivefold more brains than Limbaugh and Hannity put together.  But that ain't saying much.

Yeah, it's a rant, a rant about our liberty going down the toilet on account of those who wear "liberty" on their sleeves!


I think it was back in the 60's that someone, I cxan't remember who, observed that it fascism comes to this coutry it would come in the guise of patriotism, wraped in the flag (refering to another thread.)  How true.

I think it was back in the 60's that someone, I cxan't remember who, observed that it fascism comes to this coutry it would come in the guise of patriotism, wraped in the flag (refering to another thread.)  How true.


"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped  in the flag and carrying the cross"

-- Sinclair Lewis

It's the closet I could find...

I also found this....

When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the American flag. - Strom Thurmond

Fascist regimes always browbeat the public about patriotism and loyalty.
There's "us," the good guys, and "them,' the bad guys.  The bad guys walk among us, are you one of them?  Is your spouse? Is your neighbor? 
Do you disagree with the government's position, you show the enemy our resolve is weak.  You are as good as one of them!  Remember when Bush announced, "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists."  That's as nakedly a fascist statement as any in the past fifty years.

But I think it's most important to remember Mussolini's own words when we consider the Big Business position of the President and the Republican party:
Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism
because it is the merger of state and corporate power."

Our news media is owned lock stock and barrel by the corporations, and the corporations control our politicians.  Who wants to be called "fascist"?  Too many negative connotations.  Therefore, the politicians and the media subsistute innacurate euphemisms, such as "capitalism," "free enterprise," and "individualism," for what would be best described as "fascism."  When you examine how our elections are funded, who our elected officials REALLY answer to, how legislative priorities are set, and who OWNS our media outlets, you see the ascendency of the corporations above the state and above the will of the people.