AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

@MontereyJack,

Really< Monterey Jack? Are you one of the chimpanzees who are afraid of people who can defeat your ideas. I care nothing about the containment structure. As long as I can post and as long as there are people( even one) to read my posts, I will continue.

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Setanta wrote:

Given Fox's low, low threshold for taking offense at what people post, i'm surprised she doesn't have half the membership on ignore.

She doesn't have half the membership on ignore and she has far more integrity than you, since she is not afraid to engage in dialogue. Your attempts to denigrate her show that you are just like Obama. When he gave his reasons for his opposition to Gitmo and obfuscated through a half thought out plan as to where to put those prisoners, I thought he was being niggardly. However, I would not go so far as to de nigrate the president. Others can do that much better than I.

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@Setanta,

The senile Setanta wrote:

For those who believe in such nonsense, it were a blessing that E. A. Blair, otherwise known as George Orwell, has been dead these fifty years and more. One can easily imagine the horror and loathing he would experience to see his thoughtful prose so cavalierly used to support the drivel that Ican't has written, and which bears no relation to the content or the meaning of Orwell's Opus.

********************************************************************

If Setanta knows how to read( unless he doubts the accuracy of this quote and in that case, if has any integrity, can look it up for himself--I doubt he owns a copy of Orwell's"1984") he can find what he calls Orwell's "thoughtful prose" on Page 303 which says:

"Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the IDEOLOGICAL needs of Ingsoc or ENGLISH SOCIALISM."

Now, the senile Setanta may want to fool us into believing that Bush was a SOCIALIST but Barack Hussein Obama is not a SOCIALIST, but he will fool no one.

How do you like that "thoughtful prose"??

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@Debra Law,

Hear hear. I lacked the energy for the explanation, and in the case of Ican't, i consider such an effort to be pearls before swine. But i applaud you for your patience.

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I don't know a lot about PravdaRu other than it is extremely ...um ....liberal?....with the ads they take on at the website. But one of the most persistent drum beats of criticism of the Bush administration was the low opinion of America held by those abroad. I thought it interesting here what one foreigner thought of us now:

Quote:

American capitalism gone with a whimper
27.04.2009 Source: Pravda.Ru

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

MORE HERE

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@ican711nm,

Quote:

Orwell denied his book was an attack on Socialism. But according to Julian Symons, the writer of the Introduction in my copy of the book, "The book was almost from the day of publication interpreted by conservatives everywhere as an attack on the totalitarian nature of Socialsism by a writer who had seen the light."

Yeah.. War is peace and Orwell meant the book was about socialism when he said it wasn't.

It seems Orwell was correct but the target could well have been conservatism who prove his point by saying the opposite of what Orwell said and expect us to believe it is true.

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@parados,

"Orwell" believed in democratic socialism which is pretty much what the USA has become in the 20th Century. He was absolutely speaking against dictatorship or totalitarianism in all its forms. He was absolutely describing how totalitarian governments control the people and how a combination of threat of punishment combined with control of all education and thought control the people consent to submit.

An example: personally insulting or otherwise offensive posts deserve to be voted down. The numbnuts who vote down posts just because they don't like what they say however are demonstrating thought control as Orwell portrayed it. All dissent or thought contrary to the 'party' doctrine is intolerable and must be disciplined, humiliated, punished.

Referring to the essay previously posted, the first step is to 'dumb down' and make ideological fanatics of the people and suppress any alternate points of view or theory. History must be rewritten. And before long we arrive at the point where a national leader can make the people accept or believe anything simply by saying it.

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

I don't know a lot about PravdaRu other than it is extremely ...um ....liberal?

Pravda, or "The Truth", was the old communist state newspaper in the Soviet Union. (Well, to be more precise it was the paper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but as such functioned de facto as the state paper.)

I dont know to what extent the current Pravda site organisationally sprang from the old Soviet newspaper, but it seems a safe bet that it models itself upon that tradition.

In short, it's also a safe bet that Pravda.ru will disagree with liberals, American or otherwise, on pretty much every principle of note. Needles to say, liberals and communists dont like each other much and think along very different lines. (Note, for random example, how hated George Soros is by the communists in the East - and vice versa.)

Pravda will cheer on any sign of the demise of both liberal democracy and the US in pretty much any shape or form - and if said demise is not forthcoming, they just imagine it instead. (Long, long tradition of communist newspapers signalling the imminent collapse of the capitalist West.) The article you posted seems a fairly good example of the latter.

1 Reply

@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

"Orwell" believed in democratic socialism which is pretty much what the USA has become in the 20th Century.

You believe the USA is a democratic socialist country? And you believed this before Obama was elected too?

I bet Orwell would have disagreed...

Quote:

"Orwell" believed in democratic socialism which is pretty much what the USA has become in the 20th Century. He was absolutely speaking against dictatorship or totalitarianism in all its forms. He was absolutely describing how totalitarian governments control the people

So you agree with Parados then. Orwell believed in democratic socialism, and intended his book as a warning against totalitarianism. Ergo, the book was not about socialism - which comes in democratic and totalitarian flavours - but about totalitarianism - which comes in socialist and conservative (and many other kinds of) flavours. Isn't that roughly what Parados meant?

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Colin Powell this morning on Face the Nation:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5036892n

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@Foxfyre,

Foxfyre wrote:

I don't know a lot about PravdaRu other than it is extremely ...um ....liberal?

Pravda.ru was started by the same journalists who had been working for the Soviet newspaper of the same name until 1991. As you probably very well know, the original Pravda was the official propaganda organ of the Soviet Communist Party.

Today, a new newspaper exists which is also called Pravda. It's not related to the online publication. Pravda.ru is mostly a sensationalist, nationalist tabloid style online publication.

1 Reply

@nimh,

nimh wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

"Orwell" believed in democratic socialism which is pretty much what the USA has become in the 20th Century.

You believe the USA is a democratic socialist country? And you believed this before Obama was elected too?

I bet Orwell would have disagreed...

Quote:
"Orwell" believed in democratic socialism which is pretty much what the USA has become in the 20th Century. He was absolutely speaking against dictatorship or totalitarianism in all its forms. He was absolutely describing how totalitarian governments control the people

So you agree with Parados then. Orwell believed in democratic socialism, and intended his book as a warning against totalitarianism. Ergo, the book was not about socialism - which comes in democratic and totalitarian flavours - but about totalitarianism - which comes in socialist and conservative (and many other kinds of) flavours. Isn't that roughly what Parados meant?

I do think that much of the 'democratic socialism' that Orwell believed in was evident in the USA through much of the Twentieth Century and I don't think he would have found the USA particularly disagreeable. I think Orwell would have probably been a pretty staunch Constitutionalist had he been an American, thought probably not as militantly as say an Ican or I tend to be. He certainly saw the dangers in giving government the power to control all information and the mind, activities, and self-determination of the people. I believe he was have been absolutely opposed to the kind of totalitarian socialism advocated by Marx for instance which was presumably necessary to steer the people into a benevolent cooperative communism.

I think Orwell would have seen much of the dangerous phenomenon of what he illustrated with Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four in some of the current events in the USA now.

But yes, I think Orwell was speaking out against totalitarianism. I have never figured out what Parados believes about much of anything so I'll leave it to you to decide whether I agree with him or not.

(I'm not sure whether you and I are having a difference in semantic definitions here re 'liberal' etc. though. I'm not sure if you define 'liberal' as most Americans define 'liberal'.)

For instance we have been using this definition of Classical Liberalism as the basic core principles undergirding Modern American Conservatism or MAC:

Quote:

Classical liberalism
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism[1], laissez-faire liberalism[2], and market liberalism[3] or, outside the United States and Britain, sometimes simply liberalism is a doctrine stressing individual freedom, free markets, and limited government. This includes the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, individual freedom from restraint, equality under the law, constitutional limitation of government, free markets, and a gold standard to place fiscal constraints on government as exemplified in the writings of John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, David Ricardo, Voltaire, Montesquieu and others.

As such, it is the fusion of economic liberalism with political liberalism of the late 18th and 19th centuries. The "normative core" of classical liberalism is the idea that laissez-faire economics will bring about a spontaneous order or invisible hand that benefits the society, though it does not necessarily oppose the state's provision of some basic public goods with what constitutes public goods being seen as very limited. The qualification classical was applied retroactively to distinguish it from more recent, 20th-century conceptions of liberalism and its related movements, such as social liberalism Classical liberals are suspicious of all but the most minimal government and object to the welfare state.

Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman, are credited with influencing a revival of classical liberalism in the twentieth century after it fell out of favor beginning in the late nineteenth century and much of the twentieth century. In relation to economic issues, this revival is sometimes referred to, mainly by its opponents, as "neoliberalism". The German "ordoliberalism" has a whole different meaning, since the likes of Alexander Rüüüüstow and Wilhelm Rööööpke have advocated a more interventionist state, as opposed to laissez-faire liberals. Classical liberalism has many aspects in common with modern libertarianism, with the terms being used almost interchangeably by those who support limited government.

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@old europe,

old europe wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:
I don't know a lot about PravdaRu other than it is extremely ...um ....liberal?

Pravda.ru was started by the same journalists who had been working for the Soviet newspaper of the same name until 1991. As you probably very well know, the original Pravda was the official propaganda organ of the Soviet Communist Party.

Today, a new newspaper exists which is also called Pravda. It's not related to the online publication. Pravda.ru is mostly a sensationalist, nationalist tabloid style online publication.

Roll yer eyes all you want OE, but the 'liberal' in the context in which I used it referred to the choice of advertising on the website and was not a reference to any ideology. In American English there is more than one definition for the word 'liberal'.

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@Foxfyre,

As there are MACs and Conservatives. ROFL

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@nimh,

Great saying they had in the old Soviet Union about Pravda and Isvestia (the latter meaning "the news").

There is no truth in the news, and there is no news in the truth.

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@wandeljw,

wandeljw wrote:

Colin Powell this morning on Face the Nation:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5036892n

This was vintage Powell who lately strikes me as being in a "rebuilding and protecting the Powell legacy" mode. To his credit he expressed his opinion well, made good points, and refused to be baited into mudslinging which was obviously CBS's hope. No conservative Republican, however, believes that he believed Barack Obama personified Republican values/ideas better than John McCain or that any conservative Republican would endorse the current tax and spend program in progress. So I'm not sure what Powell is lobbying for at this time. It's very difficult to dislike him though the Left had no problem smearing him when he was saying what they didn't like. One member on A2K posted a picture of him in a bandana and referred to him as a 'hanky head'.

So going back to the opening post on this thread, it would be interesting to debate Powell's viewpoint vs the Cheney/Limbaugh doctrine that it was the GOP's becoming inclusive of principles and values foreign to conservative Republians--some embraced by President Bush 43--that cost us the Congress in 2006 and the Presidency too in 2008.

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@Foxfyre,

So you just wanted to point out that a tabloid kinda online publication has tabloid kinda stuff on their website? Alright then.

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@nimh,

Nimh shows that his brain has been seriously affected by living in the Socialist Paradise of Hungary. There the people are subsisting on Paprika.

Nimh and the other left wing morons are unable to understand what Orwell wrote.

He said that Oceania was a place where Insoc was practiced. Ingsoc was. according to Orwell ENGLISH SOCIALISM. But if the left wing morons want to delude themselves and deny what Orwell himself wrote on the pages of "1984", they can continue to do so.

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Nimh wrote:

So you agree with Parados then. Orwell believed in democratic socialism, and intended his book as a warning against totalitarianism. Ergo, the book was not about socialism - which comes in democratic and totalitarian flavours - but about totalitarianism - which comes in socialist and conservative (and many other kinds of) flavours. Isn't that roughly what Parados meant?

*************************

That is the kind of convoluted sh.t that fuzzy minded liberals believe. Nimh is completely ignorant about "1984". He never read the book carefully and if he did, he skipped the last and most important section( he was looking only for the salacious parts of the book).

Now Nimh may think he knows more than the writer of the book, Orwell, when he says the book was NOT about Socialism, but it is clear to anyone who reads Orwell's own words, that Nimh is highly excrementatious when he writes about totalitarianism.

l. Orwell wrote:

P. 303--"1984"--Newsspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet the IDEOLOGICAL needs of Ingsoc, or E N G L I S H
S O C I A L I S M.

2. Nimh, who has read little except articles about Marx, Engels and Chairman Mao, does not know that in "Liberal Fsxcism", Jonah Goldberg showed that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National SOCIALISM and Mussolini's Fascism. The Nazis followed the same policies so dear to Barack Hussein Obama's heart. The Nazis believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth. They purged the church from public policy. The Nazis supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They maintained a strict racial quota in thier universities where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in alternative medicine and organic farming.

Nimh, who refuses to look at anything outside of his decaying Socialist world, does not know these things because he only parrots the doctrinaire Socialist line/

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@wandeljw,

wandeljw tells us that Powell was on Face the Notion this morning. I watched it but I was frustrated by Powell's lack of specificity. Why was he so niggardly with details? I do not mean to de nigrate him but he gave no coherent rationale.

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AMERICAN CONSERVATISM IN 2008 AND BEYOND

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