DAS DRITTE REICH -- AND FRIENDS

There is rather a good short summary of Hitler's thinking here by Koenigsberg -- showing that Hitler was devoted to Germany, that he saw Germany as a living organism that was severely threatened and that he saw the 'alien' Jews as incompatible with German life. Koenigsberg also shows how anti-individual Nazism was: "Hitler stated that Volksgemeinschaft ["people's community"] meant "overcoming bourgeois privatism, unconditionally equating the individual fate and the fate of the nation." Every single German was obligated to unite with the community, to embrace and share the common faith."

And where did Hitler get the idea of Germany as a biological organism? He was quite explicit that he got his eugenic ideas from American "Progressives" so it is rather unlikely that the ideas of the American President who was so prominent in the events of World War I and its aftermath could have escaped him. And if you look here, you will see that the anti-business Woodrow Wilson too justified his wish to scrap the checks and balances of the American constitution on the grounds that the U.S. government was "not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life... No living thing can have its organs offset against each other, as checks, and live".

Jamie Glazov knows the score: "Leftwing gulag denial shares a profound affinity with neo-nazi holocaust denial. This is no surprise, since nazism and socialism are closely related. Nazism wasn't termed "National Socialism" without reason. Aside from both ideologies supporting state control of the economy, nazism and socialism also emphasize struggle and revolution for the sake of bringing about an apocalyptic end to the present phase of world history. Rejecting the world they live in, socialists envision class utopia, while nazis dream of racial utopia. This explains why both systems subordinate the individual to the state and rely upon an elite party, organized in military style, to achieve their objectives. In the end, the socialist and nazi visions demonize - necessarily - a certain portion of the human race. Mass genocide is the logical outcome of both ideologies, since humans must be sacrificed in the name of a transcendent humanism.... Socialists must wipe out the historical memory of the gulag, because that way another gulag becomes possible"

Those conservative Nazis! "Going down into the Chancellery bunker near the end of WWII, Joseph Goebbels took a look around at the burning wreckage of Berlin and exulted to his diary: "These flames are consuming the last of 19th-century bourgeois civilization!""

There is a good essay here that uses extensive quotes to show that Socialism, Communism, Nazism and Fascism are all essentially the same and that America and other Western countries today are far closer to historical Fascism than is at all comfortable. I draw similar conclusions myself here and here

September 1st (today in the USA at the time of writing) is the 65th anniversary of the German invasion of Poland. To mark the occasion, Sean Gabb has drawn our attention to his defence of the great appeaser! It is not as silly as it sounds and is worth a read. Though in the end I think Churchill was right.

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ELSEWHERE

Rather Biased is good on the way the mainstream media have "sanitized" the anti-Republican demonstrators in New York.

Clayton Cramer reports a typical example of Leftist attention-seeking at the Republican convention and is puzzled by it. He does not seem to realize that attention-seeking is what motivates Leftists in general. Leftism makes sense only as a psychological condition, not as as a serious analysis of anything. More on that here.

Taranto has some good excerpts from the convention speech by the last real Republican mayor of NYC.

LOL. Leftist self-delusion: "In the end, there was no need for a big rally in Central Park. No need for a string of angry speakers standing at some podium bashing President Bush and the Republicans. In the end, the torrent of people and placards that choked the streets of Manhattan yesterday was more powerful than any speech."

Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch "identifies himself with pride as a lifelong Democrat.... No surprise, then, that Koch disagrees with George W. Bush on just about every domestic issue, from taxes to marriage to prescription drugs. But he's voting for him in November. "I've never before supported a Republican for president," Koch told me last week. "But I'm doing so this time because of the one issue that trumps everything else: international terrorism. In my judgment, the Democratic Party just doesn't have the stomach to stand up to the terrorists. But Bush is a fighter."

Look at the facts, not conspiracy theories: "If we move beyond the conspiracy mode of thinking, we can begin to judge the total contribution of the Bush presidency and see that we are far better off than we were at the end of the Clinton administration. The president has ably led us through the uncertain days following the worst attack on our country in modern times. Funding of terror cells has been disrupted; Al Qaeda operations have been crippled. A brilliant military victory in Afghanistan has eliminated bases for training camps that were turning out fanatical anti-American terrorists, and this victory and the one in Iraq have made the Middle East and the world a safer place on the whole.... The jobs that John Kerry has complained about for months are beginning to come through in substantial numbers. The largest tax cut in American history has returned the people's money to them".

Second-term hopes?: "Bush-bashers enjoy saying President Bush is far, far to the right. But as virtually any conservative will tell you, the president has been a me-too liberal on many of the issues that matter most -- spending like crazy, expanding the bureaucracy, subsidizing farmers, caving in to free-speech curbs and recklessly enlarging an entitlement program. That list is just for starters. The question is whether he and his supporters can make a convincing case before the end of the Republican National Convention that he will rectify his errors -- get right with the right -- while moving boldly with particularized, innovative policies on some major problems mostly ignored in the first term."

David Brooks says there is not a lot of public support for cuts to big government so conservatives have to get used to that. He points to historical precedents for GWB's alternative strategy of using big government in a way that liberates and empowers the individual rather than taking his choices away and forcing him into a straitjacket of uniformity.

Dick McDonald has had problems with an unreadably wide page lately but I fixed it for him last night. He has a very good short post here about how the Bush tax-cuts on investment income have kept the economy surging ahead despite oil shocks and other pressures.

Marybeth has been having fun comparing Google with other search engines. Her comment on Cambodia gave me a laugh.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH and GUN WATCH. Mirror sites here, here and here

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The vast hatred of President Bush coming from the Left seems to focus almost entirely on his Iraq policy and a claim that it is "stupid" or dishonest. Yet the world's most successful and influential Leftist intellectual -- the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- is a vigorous supporter of that policy. It shows that everything said to justify the Leftist hatred of Bush is mere camouflage. What they really hate is someone non-Leftist wielding great power. The hatred is purely emotional and envious -- with only the slightest pretense to reasoning tacked on. As usual, principles have nothing to do with it.

The conflict between conservatives and Leftists is not usually a conflict between realists and idealists. Mostly it is a conflict between realists and people who will say anything to win applause

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