Apart from Atheism and abortion, which did not really become a political issue until the 1970s what exactly did the anti-communist conservatives not like about the communists? Brezhnev era Soviet Union pretty much sounds like a conservative`s paradise."Gay and lesbian rights" in the Soviet Union? You`re having a laugh. There was no such thing as "don`t ask, don`t tell" in the Red Army.
Tough on crime and mild on police brutality? You betcha! Dirty Harry, that quintessential conservative hero would have loved it in the good ole USSR.Immigration? As conservative as it gets. Not only did they not let people in, they didn`t let people out!Mistrust of Rock n` Roll? Absolutely. The party made it its job to discourage Rock n` Roll recordings and long haired freaks in jeans were bound to be wathced and reported on for something by their nosey neighbours.
Gloryfication of the army? Til your ears bled! There was the army day, the navy day, the air force day, the anti-aircraft force day, the airborne force day... And the biggest public holiday had the biggest parade... ever . Evey year!Anti flag-burning laws? Just for warming up. Not only did you go to jail for burning the flag, but for swearing at it.Invading Afganistan, fighting Islamofascists and spreading women`s rights? Check. Did have a more hands on approach too. Death penalty? Of course. Never even an issue.Automaker bailouts? A giant understatement and that`s putting it mildly.So as someone who missed most of the Cold War, why exactly did the conservatives not like the communists? Why exactly did Reagan call it an "evil empire". It seems to me it was really Reagan`s dream empire. That`s how he wanted the USA to look, no? I think the only reason conservatives disliked the communists was because by Khruschev`s time the communists were the better conservatives. They even managed to arguably be anti-semitic, just like the good old European Dreyfus afair conservatives!
And I get accused of trolling...
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
I enjoyed this post. It further bolsters my thinking that left and right are virtually meaningless terms. I kind of think of them as the square-circles versus the circular-squares. BTW, Hitler was a vegetarian, anti-gun, anti smoker, hippie.
You see, you're thinking. And until you learn not to do that, you'll never understand conservatism or its principles.
Diminishing Marginal Utility - IT'S THE LAW!
WW2 was a victory for the New Socialists: Communists over the Old Socialists: Fascists. The problem was that complete communal ownership of production was inneficient, murderious and just plain horrible. So the brilliant W. F. Buckley and others understood the destructiveness of Communism formed their own Communist Lite Movement (Much more like the previous Fascists) out of the old right. These folks believed in the value of foreign interventionism and the control of the world. They engineered the Republican Party to become more interventionist and build a security state at home. Their biggest selling point was that they being Fascist were not Communists so the economy could function unlike the USSR, China, North Korea and later Cuba. And to their credit build an impressive propaganda machine that focused on marginally smaller government at home and lots of foreign intervention abroad.
marko, i dont understand your post. it does come of as trolling. just because someone is culturally conservative does not mean they would celebrate cultures and societies that exhibit some conservative characteristics in amongst nightmarish exceptions to core principles.
Marko:I think the only reason conservatives disliked the communists was because by Khruschev`s time the communists were the better conservatives. They even managed to arguably be anti-semitic, just like the good old European Dreyfus afair conservatives!
conservatives in politics are no good seeing as they favour the state. but cultural conservatives can not be accused of this.
when you were writing this critique did you mean to paint such individuals as Hoppe and W.BLock with this 'disliking communists because they were better conservatives' brush , because this is 'nonsense on stilts'
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
how could marko have missed that
nirgrahamUK: how could marko have missed that
Maybe he's wearing Trembley glasses.
The atoms tell the atoms so, for I never was or will but atoms forevermore be.
Yours sincerely,
Physiocrat
Byzantine:Because they abolished rights in private property and elevated the State above Church and Family.
Just like the conservatives did!
(Only real difference is that they did it in the name of preserving private property, Church, and Family.)
nirgrahamUK: marko, i dont understand your post. it does come of as trolling. just because someone is culturally conservative does not mean they would celebrate cultures and societies that exhibit some conservative characteristics in amongst nightmarish exceptions to core principles. Marko:I think the only reason conservatives disliked the communists was because by Khruschev`s time the communists were the better conservatives. They even managed to arguably be anti-semitic, just like the good old European Dreyfus afair conservatives! conservatives in politics are no good seeing as they favour the state. but cultural conservatives can not be accused of this. when you were writing this critique did you mean to paint such individuals as Hoppe and W.BLock with this 'disliking communists because they were better conservatives' brush , because this is 'nonsense on stilts'
And your reply comes off as trolling to me. Are you replying to what is actually written, or are you replying to what you think I meant with it? When I will want to say something about Hoppe and Block I will say it. I know how to spell their names, so you will know when I do. I specificaly said "anti-communist conservatives". The Cold War warrios. Now as you may know Rothbard fell out with them at National Review so I don`t see why I can`t poke fun at them, do you? The meaning of my post was twofold. First it was to ask, tongue firmly in cheek, why did "you" get so worked up about "us" during the Cold War and were always going on about "rolling back" communism? "We" actually minded our buisiness and post 1953 were quite conservative and getting more so, certainly by the standards of your leading conservatives. What was there to rollback?And second it was to show (once again) "conservatism" doesn`t meaning anything at all. It is a word which means whatever you want it to mean and is therefore devoid of all meaning. What is such a thing as a conservative stance, when later-day communist aparatchiks can for the most part pass for conservatives, particularly for the most bullish old-fashioned throne and altar types of conservatives? (Of course here the altar was to Marx-Lenin, and the trend was toward slow-motion secularisation.)
Byzantine: Because they abolished rights in private property and elevated the State above Church and Family.
Because they abolished rights in private property and elevated the State above Church and Family.
marko, i respect you. its all good. i think we were all being light hearted on this thread. but its easy to get sucked into a trollwar thing where none is intended.
at the end of the day its so easy for people to speak past each other. 'conservative' is a loaded term with all sorts of meanings and contexts. if you were attacking political cnservatives. then awesome everyone here will join you in ridiculing them. if its cultural conservatives then not so. i'll assume you were reffering to political ones,.
nirgrahamUK: at the end of the day its so easy for people to speak past each other. 'conservative' is a loaded term with all sorts of meanings and contexts. if you were attacking political cnservatives. then awesome everyone here will join you in ridiculing them. if its cultural conservatives then not so. i'll assume you were reffering to political ones,.
February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
is there a difference between political liberals and cultural liberals?
Juan:Relevance ? Besides, what do you mean by liberals ? Social democrats ? Political and cultural conservatives are both control freaks. Cultural conservatives' new tune is that now their system will be voluntary theocracy...or something. What a joke.
...or something. It sounds to me like the only joke is your understanding of the two.
Juan:Yeah, 'cultural marxism' blinds me...I fail to see the merits of war movies, too. All that touching nationalism and stuff.
Oh wow look its a man made of straw with a red herring in his pocket....
Byzantine: Naturally we'll win, because the lefties will be too busy arguing over whether firearms are inherently sexist and whether the battalion is sufficiently representative of the transgendered/visible minority/differently-abled.
Naturally we'll win, because the lefties will be too busy arguing over whether firearms are inherently sexist and whether the battalion is sufficiently representative of the transgendered/visible minority/differently-abled.
Precisely. It was my point recently about the LLs. While Rod Long debates over whether an article on Chomsky is "left libertarian enough", people are actually writing articles challenging Chomsky. My take can be found in the comments of the blog post.
It's these obsessions with anachronism, nit picking and semantics that makes the left in general (marxists, anti-capitalists, mutualists) stuck infinitely in first gear.
liberty student:Precisely. It was my point recently about the LLs. While Rod Long debates over whether an article on Chomsky is "left libertarian enough", people are actually writing articles challenging Chomsky
You mean like this one?
Market anarchist, Linux geek, aspiring Perl hacker, and student of the neo-Aristotelians, the classical individualist anarchists, and the Austrian school.
As someone who did experience this period, I think that you have to understand that a Reagan Republican was something completely different from what is now known as a conservative. Political life in the U.S. was really depressing in 1979. Inflation was skyrocketing, Iranians were holding a bunch of U.S. hostages, and the Soviet Union was building up their military. Meanwhile the U.S. military was still completely demoralized by the Vietnam war and high school dropout pay for soldiers. Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter had all negotiated toothless peace treaties with the USSR, which the U.S. abided by and the USSR ignored. They were sending U.S. funds to the USSR, supposedly for food but the money ended up going into weapons programs. We did not know then, but we do know now, that the Soviets were planning to attack the U.S. and had constructed a huge underground city to protect their "elite" from a retaliatory nuclear attack.
Into this environment came Reagan, who had experienced coercion of card-carrying members of the U.S. Communist Party in his days leading the screen actors' guild. He told us that we would have to endure a recession but that we wold see prosperity after it was over. He cut taxes and consistently stated that he would cut government spending. His Fed chairman, Paul Volker, hiked the Fed rates to the point where mortgage rates were 19%. Regan called the USSR the evil empire, cut off their funding, and held them accountable for negotiated treaties.
After a brief recession, the U.S. economy returned to prosperity and stayed there (with the exception of a brief plunge in the stock market in 1987). We now know that the financial pressure that he put on the USSR caused their downfall. Voting for the first time in the 1984 election, my choice was obvious.
I'm not saying that Regan did everything right, he started the "war on drugs", had his share of scandals, and I now know that he ran up the federal deficit, but he laughed at the idea of national I.D. cards and never treated U.S. citizens (apart from illegal drug users) as criminals. Despite the very real Soviet threat and problems in the economy, he didn't create a department of homeland security, spy on citizens, or nationalize companies. The flag burning, gays in the military issues did not present themselves until after the Regan presidency and the U.S. did not invade Afganistan, just sent them weapons to fight the Soviets. In other words, Reagan had his share of faults but he was still far superior to any other presidential candidate (RP excepted) in my lifetime.
liberty student: Byzantine: Naturally we'll win, because the lefties will be too busy arguing over whether firearms are inherently sexist and whether the battalion is sufficiently representative of the transgendered/visible minority/differently-abled. Precisely. It was my point recently about the LLs. While Rod Long debates over whether an article on Chomsky is "left libertarian enough", people are actually writing articles challenging Chomsky. My take can be found in the comments of the blog post. It's these obsessions with anachronism, nit picking and semantics that makes the left in general (marxists, anti-capitalists, mutualists) stuck infinitely in first gear.
Kevin Carson and Roderick Long are both good guys, in my opinion (unlike Marxists). Chomsky is not going to listen to challenges, anyway. His lazy dismissal of Rothbardian anarchism as "so full of hate that no one would want to live in it" is proof of that. Most of these articles are for the readers.
Byzantine: Cultural Marxism arose out of the perception that the traditional institutions of family, the Church, the academy, and private property inhibited the success of the Marxist revolution of the economy. Men liked their stuff, their people, their creed too much to embrace the egalitarian ideal. And so, the State had to supplant the heterosexual man with the products of his own labor as breadwinner and social safety net, and the Church and academy had to be infiltrated and co-opted to educate everyone in this new, politically correct way of thinking.
Cultural Marxism arose out of the perception that the traditional institutions of family, the Church, the academy, and private property inhibited the success of the Marxist revolution of the economy. Men liked their stuff, their people, their creed too much to embrace the egalitarian ideal. And so, the State had to supplant the heterosexual man with the products of his own labor as breadwinner and social safety net, and the Church and academy had to be infiltrated and co-opted to educate everyone in this new, politically correct way of thinking.
i was thinking about this subject a few days ago. i swear we are like twins or something. you made my day mate.
on the subject i have to say that it was simply knee-jerk reactionaryism. we did to russia what austria did to france.
garegin: on the subject i have to have that it was simply knee-jerk reactionaryism. we did to russia what austria did to france.
on the subject i have to have that it was simply knee-jerk reactionaryism. we did to russia what austria did to france.
I think it was rather the momentum. Which is also why the democratisation of 1991 - except for the Buchanite wing - did not change their goals.
im too confused. can u rephrase that?
on the side note: the OG conservatives were collectivist utalitarians. u can still here far-right europeans talking about the evil of greed and globalization. i mean look at the taliban.
It's rather simple: the bastions of American imperialism needed SOME boogeyman to turn to after WWII.
that is true but not the whole picture. isolationists like taft still hated socialism with passion. conservatives hate communism but when was the last time the amish or the monks were put on a blacklist.
the essence of conservatives is double standart and defence of the status quo. there are no objective ends or ethical standarts. and since the ancien regime is always on the side of chauvinistic gendarms and public execution, conservatives around the world hold roughly the same values.
the archetypical right-wingers were the altar and throne pharisees. its the same strory two millenia later.
Solomon:Just like the conservatives did!
Hoppe, Rothbard and Mises certainly proposed such measures.
Brainpolice: It's rather simple: the bastions of American imperialism needed SOME boogeyman to turn to after WWII.
I diagree. From the book Regan's War by Peter Schweizer:
"In retrospect, it is clear that Regan was largely correct about communism and his critics were wrong. Soviet communism was the threat that he claimed it was, and was vulnerable in the way he said it would be. He was on the correct side of the great battles of his forty-year struggle against communism. Moscow and its supporters did try to gain a level of control in Hollywood; the peace movement in the 1970's and 1980's was being influenced by the Soviet Union; and Moscow and Havana did have plans to subvert Central America. Archives in the former Soviet bloc settle these debates."
the problem with BP's statement is that while its true, it misses the point. the point is not whether the red threat was real or imagined, thats like saying "gays are not gonna take over the world" or "interracial marriage is under control. the issue is that conservatives didnt have any real reason to hate USSR. as for reds taking over the world, thats what all revolutionaries are supposed to do- spread the flames.
garegin: im too confused. can u rephrase that?
I`m saying it was momentum. USSR became the enemy and so it stayed the enemy. Nobody was continously examining if they stil qualify for an enemy. (Not like there are requirements anyway.) For the buerocrats too many jobs depended on it and for the public it had really turned into a peeing contest.* It really became like a football rivalry rather than an ideological conflict. (Ideology was more of an aesthetic, something like club colours. Symbolicaly important, but really beside the point.)
And somewhere along the way "communism is evil" morphed into "Russians are evil" so when communism fell the rivalry could go on without skipping a beat. Only the Buchanites proved to be sincere about their anti-communism so for them 1991 was an opportunity for rapprochement, but they were a voice in the wilderness.American empire is often said to be continuation of the British Empire and well what do you know, British Empire too was - after 1815 - always looking to "contain" Russia, also often with ideological justification, so I am not really surprised. Maybe it`s old momentum from all the way back in London.
*In USSR as well as in US.
Barry Goldwater.
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Political Atheists Blog
Brainpolice:It's rather simple: the bastions of American imperialism needed SOME boogeyman to turn to after WWII.
DougM: Brainpolice: It's rather simple: the bastions of American imperialism needed SOME boogeyman to turn to after WWII. I diagree. From the book Regan's War by Peter Schweizer: "In retrospect, it is clear that Regan was largely correct about communism and his critics were wrong. Soviet communism was the threat that he claimed it was, and was vulnerable in the way he said it would be. He was on the correct side of the great battles of his forty-year struggle against communism. Moscow and its supporters did try to gain a level of control in Hollywood; the peace movement in the 1970's and 1980's was being influenced by the Soviet Union; and Moscow and Havana did have plans to subvert Central America. Archives in the former Soviet bloc settle these debates."
Ray-gun was a neo-fascist puppet.