AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

Rich Iott, the Tea Party-supported GOP nominee for Congress in Ohio's 9th District, is part of a group that likes to don German Waffen SS uniforms and participate Nazi re-enactments, Atlantic journalist Josh Green revealed on "Real Time with Bill Maher."
The group, called Wiking, acts out exploits from the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, an actual Nazi division, which fought on the Eastern Front during World War II .

Iott, who confirms his involvement with the group, denies any belief in the principles of Nazism.

"It's purely historical interest in World War II," he told The Atlantic.

Iott can't remember when he joined the group, although his name appears on a group roster from 2003. He says he participated in the group with his son "as a father-son bonding thing."

While Iott neglects to address Jewish voters he might have offended, he does address veterans in an e-mail to the Atlantic: "Never, in any of my reenacting of military history, have I meant any disrespect to anyone who served in our military or anyone who has been affected by the tragedy of war. In fact, I have immense respect for veterans who served our country valiantly, and my respect of the military and our veterans is one of the reasons I have actively studied military history throughout my life."

Incidentally, there is no longer any mention of Iott (also a member of the NRCC's Young Guns Program) on the Wiking website, and all photographs of the Congressional candidate have been removed (although some are still viewable on the Internet Archive).

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

Yes, those people are honestly being listed as 'top experts on politics, the economy, and national security?'

Yes, Palin in particular is listed as an expert in these areas?

Yes, you, Cyclo, have provided zero evidence that you are able to recognize 'top experts on politics, the economy, and national security'

2 Replies

@ican711nm,

One thing cyclops is expert at, he has refined the art of using university funded / taxpayer funded office and computer to sit around and post his liberal talking points, including his sermons about unethical and crooked Republicans, ha ha. I wonder how many other forums he posts his liberal campaigning on as well, using university / taxpayer funded office and computer? If you have any doubts about what I have uncovered here, ican, check out the economy thread, wherein Mr. cyclops has admitted what I am talking about here. At least he is honest about it, which might be better than many liberal Demcrats, even if it is unethical and hypocritical at best.

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@plainoldme,

It strikes me as interesting, POM, that the only ones commenting on Mitch Daniels are two liberal Dems.
With regards to re-enacting. That is quite a big thing in history rich Virginia. I am not into it, but there are a goodly number of folks who are into our colonial past, and our revolution against the Brits (where prisoners of war were held in my back yard. I kid you not). The Civil war actually had a skirmish just over the ridge from me involving George Custer. A mule got killed. There are people into that period in our history.
Re-enacting Nazism? That seems a bit odd to me.
As an aside, POM, I am pleased that Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, has made a big effort to come to grips with his advocacy of "all men are created equal" and his owning slaves. A tour of his home today does a much better job of telling the story then it did a few years ago.
If any of yall get to Cville, let me know. Lunch is on me.

2 Replies

@realjohnboy,

realjohnboy wrote:

If any of yall get to Cville, let me know. Lunch is on me.

I wish I had known that many years ago, as our family toured Virginia, many states actually, many Civil War sites, Jamestown, also D.C. and the Smithsonians. Cool

It was one of our best vacations ever.
I now have a good friend that is a Civil War enthusiast, actually an expert on the subject. He knows many of the parks very well. Out west, I guess the Battle of the Little Bighorn re-enactment is quite a spectacle. I remember an article on it, but I'm not sure how often they do it.

In regard to Mitch Daniels, I have heard the name, thats about it, and I think the more candidates, the better. Let the competition start and the cream rise to the top.

1 Reply

@okie,

The only A2Ker's who I have met in Cville are JPB (from Chicago) and the Cowdoc's (from Idaho).
But the porchlight is on. Yall come.

1 Reply

@realjohnboy,

Thanks for the invitation. Unfortunately, I have too many other commitments these days to venture back there.

Thanks again for being one of the most courteous and reasonable posters on A2K!! Even being an Obama supporter, you rank near the top among everyone here.

0 Replies

@ican711nm,

ican711nm wrote:

Yes, those people are honestly being listed as 'top experts on politics, the economy, and national security?'

Yes, Palin in particular is listed as an expert in these areas?

Yes, you, Cyclo, have provided zero evidence that you are able to recognize 'top experts on politics, the economy, and national security'

Look, I'm not against Republican opinions. It isn't as if it's not valid to have a different opinion than mine, or reach different conclusions; that's what politics is all about.

But the people they listed aren't exactly what you would call luminaries on these topics, I mean, I'm sure I don't have to explain that to you.

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

@JamesMorrison,

The ECR (European Conservatives and Reformists) is thought to consist of extreme right parties. Especially, it's nationalism, xenophobia and similar are ... well, frightening.
I personally find it amusing that they (most of them, at least) follow an anti-EU policy, but eagerly try to get EU-money and -subsidiaries.

I've a different opinion about Bismarck's ideas and policies.
Generally, I think, he was THE German conservative - of his time and here.

I don't think that I'm a "Go-To guy", neither here nor elsewhere.
But what really gives me some advantage is that I do know a bit about history and policy and politics here - and in some other European parts.

I don't think that you can compare Bismarck's politics really to some others - besides, perhaps, when he say something like "he's still following his ideas".
Because we do really live in very different times.

2 Replies

@plainoldme,

plainoldme wrote:

Obama is a centrist.

No, Obama is an arrogant one term liberal asshole.

3 Replies

Let's see how the right twists this to their advantage! From Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

It's easy to say and easy to document, but quite difficult to really internalize, that the United States is in the process of imperial collapse. Every now and then, however, one encounters certain facts which compellingly and viscerally highlight how real that is. Here's the latest such fact, from a new study in Health Affairs by Columbia Health Policy Professors Peter A. Muennig and Sherry A. Glied (h/t):

In 1950, the United States was fifth among the leading industrialized nations with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands. The last available measure of female life expectancy had the United States ranked at forty-sixth in the world. As of September 23, 2010, the United States ranked forty-ninth for both male and female life expectancy combined.

Just to underscore the rapidity of the decline, as recently as 1999, the U.S. was ranked by the World Health Organization as 24th in life expectancy. It's now 49th. There are other similarly potent indicators. In 2009, the National Center for Health Statistics ranked the U.S. in 30th place in global infant mortality rates. Out of 20 "rich countries" measured by UNICEF, the U.S. ranks 19th in "child well-being." Out of 33 nations measured by the OECD, the U.S. ranks 27th for student math literacy and 22nd for student science literacy. In 2009, the World Economic Forum ranked 133 nations in terms of "soundness" of their banks, and the U.S. was ranked in 108th place, just behind Tanzania and just ahead of Venezuela.

There is, however, some good news: the U.S. is now in fifth place in total number of executions, behind only China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and comfortably ahead of Yemen and Sudan, while there are two categories in which the U.S. has been and remains the undisputed champion of the world -- this one and this one. And, of course, the U.S. is not just objectively the greatest country on the planet, but the greatest country ever to exist in all of human history -- as Dave Roberts put it in response to these life expectancy numbers: "but we're No. 1 in bestness!" -- so we're every bit as exceptional as ever.

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@realjohnboy,

The first man I dated after my divorce took a dim view of re-enactors, who he regarded as people without lives. However, I knew two re-enactors quite well. One was my son's second grade teacher and the other was my last ballet instructor (around the time that dancing made me dizzy, just as motion made my mother dizzy). Both were American Revolution re-enactors and avid researchers, as many re-enactors are. The grade school teacher worked in clothing construction while the dancer studied military marching.

We formerly lived in a town whose sister city, St. Germain, is a rail suburb of Paris. There were always kids from France visiting just as our kids were always in St. Germain. We hosted a friend of my daughter's during the April vacation and took her to the Lexington, MA re-enactment. What a treat to take a French girl there because of the role the French played in winning the decisive battle of that war. A year or two later, when I was hosting a Celtic music show on a local radio station, we did live coverage from "the Bridge" in Concord.

My mother was a huge believer in vacations having an educational content. We visited Washington, D.C. and Virginia, driving all the way, when I was 15. I had always intended to return, but, that was nearly half a century ago! My ex-husband never understood tourism. His mother always blamed him for her not having been able to visit Williamsburg during their years of driving from Florida to Massachusetts during the 1950s. I asked her why she just didn't put her foot down and say, "I'm the mother. I want to see Williamsburg. You can wait in the car (as kids always did back then)." She was surprised but she stopped grousing about not seeing Williamsburg.

Is James Madison's house still a private home? I suspect it is part of a national park today. At the time, it was a family residence and the lady of the house took visitors through the first floor after the school bus took her kids off for their day. We had to wait for the bus to leave before we could go in. I remember the woman as having been immaculately dressed and coifed, rather in the Talbot's style. However, she never made eye contact with us. We were the only ticket holders and I still remember the vista from her house, across the wooded valley to Montecello, across which Madison and Jefferson would signal each other with lanterns.

1 Reply

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter, thank you for your reply.

JM

0 Replies

In my opinion we have to achieve five necessary objectives in order to begin to rescue and secure our liberty and our country:
(1) Win a conservative majority in the House;
(2) Win a conservative majority in the Senate;
(3) Impeach President Obama;
(4) Hold a trial of President Obama in the Senate;
(5) Remove President Barack Obama;
(a) in 2011 by a two-thirds Senate majority obtained with the help of some Democrats; or
(b) in 2012 by defeating President Obama's re-election.

0 Replies

@Walter Hinteler,

Walter, I also heard on the radio today that Europe is turning more extreme right in their politics. Is this true?

0 Replies

@H2O MAN,

Quote:

plainoldme wrote:

Quote:
Obama is a centrist.

No, Obama is an arrogant one term liberal asshole.

You are too kind. Actually he is worse than that. Stanley Kurtz has written a book (Radical-in-Chief )documenting the fact that the President is a flaming socialist, pure and simple. I know us conservatives knew this before the election but the MSM did a good job ignoring this. Add the fact that charges of racism would be hurled at anyone who might have investigated the Great 'Black' Hope's background in any detail and the scene was set for the Hope and Change crowd. Second best he gives us some examples in an article in NRO such as:

Quote:

A loose accusation of his being a socialist has trailed Obama for years, but without real evidence that he saw himself as part of this radical tradition. But the evidence exists, if not in plain sight then in the archives — for example, the archived files of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which include Obama’s name on a conference registration list. That, along with some misleading admissions in the president’s memoir, Dreams from My Father, makes it clear that Obama attended the 1983 and 1984 Socialist Scholars conferences, and quite possibly the 1985 conclave as well. A detailed account of these conferences (along with many other events from Obama’s radical past) and the evidence for Obama’s attendance at them can be found in my new book, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism.

The 1983 Cooper Union Conference, billed as a tribute to Marx, was precisely when Obama discovered his vocation for community organizing. Obama’s account of his turn to community organizing doesn’t add up. He portrays it as a mere impulse based on little actual knowledge. But that impulse saw Obama through two years of failed job searches. Clearly he had a deeper motivation. The evidence suggests he found it at the Socialist Scholars conferences, where he encountered the entrancing double idea that America could be transformed by a kind of undercover socialism, and that African Americans would be the key figures in advancing community organizing.

African Americans as "key figures" in the advancement of "undercover socialism"? Given all the good these socialist have done African Americans in education, poverty, and increasing their percentage of the prison population over the years I might use a different term to describe the socialists use of this demographic other than "key figures".
Kurtz's narrative on the Harold Washington mayoral race in 1983 is illuminating:

Quote:

America’s socialists saw the Harold Washington campaign as a model for their ultimate goal of pushing the Democrats to the left by polarizing the country along class lines. This socialist “realignment” strategy envisioned driving business interests out of a newly radicalized Democratic party. The loss was to be more than made up for through a newly energized coalition of poor and minority voters, led by minority politicians on the model of Harold Washington. The new coalitions would draw on the open or quiet direction of socialist community organizers, from whose ranks new Harold Washingtons would emerge. Groups like ACORN and Project Vote would swell the Democrats with poor and minority voters and, with the country divided by class, socialism would emerge as the natural ideology of the have-nots.

So the plan is not Obama's message of coming together. The plan is to exclude and demonize some members of society while seeking to perpetuate class wars. This is now the current Democratic strategy in this election cycle. All to simply gain power for the Democratic party.

Quote:

As I detail at length in Radical-in-Chief, deceptions and glaring omissions about his radical past reach far beyond Obama’s involvement with the Socialist Scholars conferences and the Midwest Academy. Archival documents reveal that Obama lied during the 2008 campaign about his ties to ACORN. New evidence confirms that Obama has hidden the truth about his relationships to Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. The unknown story of Obama’s deep involvement with a radical group called UNO of Chicago is revealed. The claims of candidate Obama and his mentors that he shunned Saul Alinsky’s confrontational tactics turn out to be a sugary fairy tale. The obfuscating techniques of Obama’s memoir, Dreams from My Father, are exposed.

The pattern of misdirection upon which President Obama’s political career has been built has its roots in the socialist background of community organizing. ACORN, Reverend Wright, and Bill Ayers were all routes into that hidden socialist world, and that is why Obama has had to obscure the truth about these and other elements of his past. More important, the president’s socialist past is still very much alive in the governing philosophy and long-term political strategy of the Obama administration.

Given this information on Obama's background I find it hard to believe that 1) He will be able to shift to the center (Clinton-like) if the GOP takes over Congress in 2011 and if so 2) gain a second term in the 2012's. This added information about his past and his actions RE these last two years will no doubt be recounted in the 2012 election cycle. Additionally a GOP controlled House will allow questions about the Dems campaign contributions, Goolsbee's information source on the Koch brother's tax status, the Sestak/Specter affair, and the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation debacle involving Obama's justice department to be more fully answered. All this leading up to the 2012 presidential elections and Americans with pricked ears lessens Obama's re-election chances considerably.

JM

1 Reply

@JamesMorrison,

Quote:

Actually he is worse than that. Stanley Kurtz has written a book (Radical-in-Chief )documenting the fact that the President is a flaming socialist, pure and simple.

But, how do you reconcile this with the fact that the choices he keeps making are eminently Capitalistic in nature?

I mean, what are the 'socialist' actions that he has taken which you can point to?

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@H2O MAN,

H2O MAN wrote:

plainoldme wrote:

Obama is a centrist.

No, Obama is an arrogant one term liberal asshole.

As a conservative, I think it is instructive to point out to others that not all conservatives think alike, and that it is also appropriate to disagree with fellow conservatives on this forum when it is appropriate. So with that in mind, I would like to make the point to H2OMAN that making such statements is not beneficial to our cause in the least, in fact I believe it is going over the line to use such rhetoric about any president. I did not appreciate it when liberals attacked Bush unmercifully, and so I do not think it is proper as decent Americans to use that kind of rhetoric at all. We can oppose Obama's policies, in fact I do, and I also believe that Obama is an extreme radical at heart. It has been no secret all of the stuff that I have posted about Obama, however I would not use the kind of terms you have used, and I disagree with their usage for any president, because I believe it is not becoming or appropriate, nor do I think it will benefit our cause to stoop to those kinds of terms.

Your usage of terms pales in comparison to some of the stuff used by liberals here on A2K, such as pom suggesting the Arizona governor would be doing well by committing suicide. I asked all liberals, everybody here, to condemn her for that, as I thought it was clearly over the line, way over the line, to no avail as I don't recall a single one that had the decency to call her out on it. As I said, even though the type of nomenclature used by you in regard to Obama is miles less serious than something like pom's, I still feel as a responsible conservative to express my opinion that we are better off sticking to the high road.

2 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Obama is a leftist liberal because like leftist liberals Obama seeks to secure the right of his fellow leftist liberals to steal wealth others earn.

Whereas, rightist liberals seek to secure their right to retain wealth they earn.

0 Replies

@H2O MAN,

You keep wetting yourself. Laughing

0 Replies

AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

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