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Thread: Evidence We're in a Third--or Fourth--Turning - Page 125







Post#3101 at 07-13-2002 07:59 AM by Stonewall Patton [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 3,857]
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On 2002-07-12 21:12, R. Gregory '67 wrote:

On 2002-07-12 18:07, AlexMnWi wrote:

Okay, I got Neo-Conservative but "The New Republic" seems quite leftist to me. Maybe someone who did not get Neo-Conservative *or* Third Way is not the best expert on where The New Republic stands?
The New Republic was leftist, at one time...40 or 50 years ago. The Neoconservative movement is led by former leftists who broke with the left during the last 2T and joined the conservatives, over their support of the Vietnam War. This happened because the left during the 1950s (GI-generation led) had by and large been supportive of the Cold War, but during the 1960s the "New Left" (led by late wave Silents with the rank and file mostly Boomers) came on the scene and turned antiwar and anti-draft. Unlike some other conservatives, whose main issues are moral and social issues (the Christian Right), or economic deregulation (free market think tanks), the Neoconservatives' big issue is a hawkish foreign policy. The New Republic was at the center of this movement.

There is an article on who the Neoconservatives are, at http://www.iraqwar.org/point3.htm

It's written by paleocons and not very sympathetic.

Alex, R. Gregory can correct me if I am wrong, but I think he/she means to say that the Weakly Standard is the neo-con rag (which it is). The New Republic is the Third Way rag.

All Third Way is in this country is New Democrat (i.e. Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and the DLC). New Democrats diverge from the traditional anti-business Democratic line in that they are willingly in bed with the corporations and are funded by the same sources as Bush-Rockefeller Republicans and neo-cons. New Democrat Third Wayers are even louder than neo-cons and Bush corporatists in praising the "virtues" of public/private (government/business) partnerships. And let us be unambiguously clear: government/business partnership is the defining aspect of fascism...which you never hear today but which was clearly understood and repeated ad nauseam by Mussolini et al. in the last saeculum. This specifically IS corporatism. The term "corporatism" does not refer to corporations. It comes from the Latin corpus, pl. corpora, and "corpora" was the term used in fascist theory to denote the bodies established for each industry in which government, management, and labor would meet to plan the economy. As Mussolini put it, corporatism is the merging of government and capital, and all power in the State. Corporatism is fascism.

New Democrat Third Wayers, neo-conservatives, and Bush Rockefeller Republicans are all corporatists, but some corporatists are more fascistic than others. For example, Bush-Rockefeller types represent oligarchic rule as opposed to dictatorial rule. A Bush White House simply fronts for and executes the will of a bunch of big wigs behind the scenes who wish to control the country and ultimately the world. The White House is simply the agent of a corporate elite. So do not look for Junior himself to fill the shoes of a stereotypical fascist dictator even though his administration's policies will often closely mirror those of historical fascist regimes. But do note that the "nationalism" of the Bush regime mirrors that of traditional fascist regimes.

Third Way New Democrats, on the other hand, have a propensity for dictatorship as opposed to oligarchy. Although they are funded by the same oligarchy, they tend to favor a "strongman" to do their bidding. But also note that they do not exhibit the traditional fascist "nationalism" espoused by the Bush types. So they pick up one fascist element over the Bush types but drop another. Our politics today is sort of a corporatist smorgasbord where you pick and choose the variety of fascist more to your liking.

When we get to the neo-cons, pay really close attention. Like the Bush-Rockefeller types, they are "nationalists" and in fact they cannot stop talking about "national greatness." But unlike the Bush-Rockefeller types, they exhibit a propensity for dictatorship versus oligarchy. They share this desire for a strongman with the New Democrat Third Wayers. So neo-cons in fact combine the distinct fascist elements of the Bush-Rockefeller types and New Democrat Third Wayers and offer the "total package" in terms of fascism in this saeculum.

What is even creepier is that neo-cons, being largely former Mensheviks, have made precisely the same journey from the Left as did the fascists of the last saeculum (as R. Gregory noted). Neo-cons represent this saeculum's closest parallel to traditional fascists of the past. You rarely hear them described in this manner (probably because they do not wear uniforms) but, objectively, the match is unmistakable. These folks are so power-hungry that they need to be watched with great caution as we enter the 4T. They have no respect for limits on their power, constitutional or otherwise; no respect for boundaries and the rights of others. All that matters is their "will to power."








Post#3102 at 07-13-2002 08:06 AM by Stonewall Patton [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 3,857]
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On 2002-07-12 22:24, AlexMnWi wrote:

Not sympathetic at all. Anyway, it says that neocons are mostly former liberals who became republicans with the reagan election. I was born 6 years into Reagans term. Yet, I get Neo-Conservative on the test. It doesnt make sense.
You don't have to be a former Menshevik to be a neo-con. You just need to share their views. Apparently you currently do to a large extent. But you are 15, and if you are in fact an INTP, I guarantee you that your views are going to change. When I was your age, I might have even scored in the Authoritarian Right like you. But you are going to start noticing logical inconsistencies in your views and you will change them in order to pursue coherence. If you manage to retake this test when you are in your early 20s, I am willing to bet that you start coming up paleo-conservative and paleo-libertarian in the Libertarian Right. Just wait and see.








Post#3103 at 07-13-2002 10:18 AM by [at joined #posts ]
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Mr. Patton,

I charged you with lying and slander here.
I have made a clear case for what I consider to be a serious charge. Other than to dance around the specifics, and/or attack me, you have refused to acknowledge the truth in this matter (You haven't even demanded that I offer proof of my charges). All the while you have stressed that your "conscience is clear."

As far as I'm concerned, you wish only to exempt yourself from the very same scrutiny you apply so viciously to others (ie., "Goebbelesque, Limbaughhesque" behavior). I can only come to one conclusion: Stonewall Patton is guilty of the very hideous thing he preaches against.


In other news...

With regards to Mr. Gregory's take in the evolution of the New Republic, I don't think I was clear as to what I meant in my reponse at all. I really wasn't trying to demean your critique, Mr. Gregory, although it was a bit disjointed. I was merely suggesting that the story probably would take a book (at least much more than a paragraph) to do it justice.

That's all. :smile:




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Marc Lamb on 2002-07-13 08:33 ]</font>







Post#3104 at 07-13-2002 10:55 AM by R. Gregory '67 [at Arizona joined Sep 2001 #posts 114]
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Post#3105 at 07-13-2002 11:13 AM by Child of Socrates [at Cybrarian from America's Dairyland, 1961 cohort joined Sep 2001 #posts 14,092]
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On 2002-07-12 14:15, Jenny Genser wrote:
On 2002-07-12 14:12, David '47 wrote:
And another quick note to our posters from the right, who have demonstrated the correct procedure for common defense - reserving all their best invective for each other.


Bravo, I think.
Whoa! You haven't heard Brian Rush and Eric Meece go after each other, have you? :grin:
I've often noticed that the hottest (and most personal) arguments here are between people on the same side of the political aisle (if we're talking right and left in this case).







Post#3106 at 07-13-2002 11:34 AM by [at joined #posts ]
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"Still, the dividing line between Neoconservative and New Democrat isn't all that big."

I would strongly disagree with this statement. The way overblown "Serbian skulls" remark notwithstanding, it is precisely because of the cultural revolution that provide such vast gulf between these two camps.

Case in point: Neo Con, Robert Kagan is a leading contributer to The Weekly Standard. In 1999, in his book History repeating itself: liberalism and foreign policy, Kagan outlines the difference with regards to foreign policy:

"When in 1912 these Democrats came to power, in all senses of that phrase, they remained trapped in their opposition rhetoric. Wilson's party was still, after all, the party of Bryan, in which pacifists and anti-imperialists had united to oppose American policy at the turn of the century for its unjust oppression of other peoples' right to self-determination. Wilson had to justify American entry into the war in the only terms that could be acceptable to early twentieth century Democrats and to anti-imperialists of both parties who, after all, thought they had re-elected Wilson in 1916 to keep them out of the European war.

Under the circumstances, it is little wonder that Wilson had to justify American entry into the war, paradoxically, on pacifist grounds. Nor is it surprising that he tried to defend alliance with the European imperial powers on anti-imperialist and, indeed, on anti-nationalist grounds. How else was the party of Bryan, once in office, to exercise power in the world? For these reasons, alone, Wilsonian internationalism had to be very different from the kind of internationalism proposed by Roosevelt.

History does repeat itself, and sometimes with surprising faithfulness to detail. Fifty years after Wilsonian internationalism seemingly destroyed itself on the rocks of the League of Nations treaty ratification debate, it began its re-emergence in the Vietnamized Democratic Party. The transformation progressed by similar stages. The main difference was that before 1968 the Democratic Party had generally embraced Rooseveltian internationalism to put force behind its liberal idealism, appealing to national pride, and of course fear of Communism, as a spur to responsible internationalism. But as a result of the Vietnam debacle, after 1968 and throughout the 1970s the Democratic Party became once again the party of Bryan, this time masquerading as the party of McGovern. The same suspicion of power, and specifically American power, gave birth to the same utopian pacifism. The same liberal trepidation about trampling on the self-determination of foreign peoples led to the same desires to negate power altogether, and with it American pride, ambition, and honor, which were once again seen as evil and atavistic.

Added to the mix this time, however, was a more genuine and explicit anti-Americanism. For now the peoples who needed to be rescued from American power were not poor Filipinos led by the freedom-fighting Aguinaldo, struggling in their own way to achieve both independence and, they claimed, liberal government, but the Viet Cong, the Khmer Rouge, the Sandinistas, and other Communist movements the world over--all of whom were self-proclaimed opponents of liberalism itself. In the hands of McGovern Democrats in the 1970s, liberal principles were now to be placed in the service of liberalism's most deadly enemies. Liberal hatred of the exercise of American power slid all too easily into hatred of American liberalism itself. Wilson, it is fair to say, would have been shocked by this turn of events, but he could not honestly disown the intellectual tradition which produced it.

The final stage of re-emergent Wilsonianism came with the election of Bill Clinton and the end of twenty-four years of Republican ascendancy.[3] The election of 1992 raised the same question as the election of 1912. How was the party of McGovern to exercise power in the world? The answer, not surprisingly, was more Wilsonian than Rooseveltian. For the past seven years, Clinton and his advisers have tried to overcome the legacy of the past twenty-five years. In some respects, they have had an easier time of it than Wilson, for they at least have the earlier legacy of Truman and Acheson to guide them. And it is too simple to say that where Clinton and his team have gone wrong, it has only been a consequence of their Wilsonian approach to the world. There are, after all, many ways to fail in foreign policy.

Still, the Clinton administration's evident discomfort with the use of power, even on behalf of idealistic goals, its stated preference for international action over effective American action, its inarticulateness when it comes to discussing national interests, its inability to explain to the American people how their parochial national interests are linked to the international interests of the civilized world, its unwillingness to appeal to American national pride, and much less to the more exalted conception of national honor--all these failures can be traced to the Wilsonian brand of internationalism, which can never quite escape its core conviction that both nation and power are dirty words.


Hence, the paleoCon/libertarian disgust with Neo Cons, because they, too call em' "dirty words", just like the New Democrats.









Post#3107 at 07-13-2002 11:41 AM by Chicken Little [at western NC joined Jun 2002 #posts 1,211]
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On 2002-07-13 09:13, Kiff '61 wrote:

I've often noticed that the hottest (and most personal) arguments here are between people on the same side of the political aisle (if we're talking right and left in this case).
I think you're right, Kiff. I can think of at least three examples of this. People from different sides of the political spectrum argue, of course, but the arguments rarely get as heated or personal. The long duel between Eric and Brian over "Cartesian something-or-other" stands out in my memory, and they are both 60s-style liberals. As I recall, after a while, they refused to speak to each other anymore. I think they have since made amends.


It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks, you make a pet out of it.
- Charles Bukowski







Post#3108 at 07-13-2002 11:46 AM by Stonewall Patton [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 3,857]
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On 2002-07-13 08:18, Marc Lamb wrote:

Mr. Patton,

I charged you with lying and slander here.
I have made a clear case for what I consider to be a serious charge. Other than to dance around the specifics, and/or attack me, you have refused to acknowledge the truth in this matter (You haven't even demanded that I offer proof of my charges). All the while you have stressed that your "conscience is clear."

As far as I'm concerned, you wish only to exempt yourself from the very same scrutiny you apply so viciously to others (ie., "Goebbelesque, Limbaughhesque" behavior). I can only come to one conclusion: Stonewall Patton is guilty of the very hideous thing he preaches against.


In other news...

With regards to Mr. Gregory's take in the evolution of the New Republic, I don't think I was clear as to what I meant in my reponse at all. I really wasn't trying to demean your critique, Mr. Gregory, although it was a bit disjointed. I was merely suggesting that the story probably would take a book (at least much more than a paragraph) to do it justice.

That's all. :smile:
I prayed for you last night as I promised I would. It does not appear to have done any good.








Post#3109 at 07-13-2002 11:54 AM by Mr. Reed [at Intersection of History joined Jun 2001 #posts 4,376]
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In the 3T, very few people seemed to care about China's war ambitions (and all this time, we've been worrying about Cuba). All of a sudden, the government is acknowledging that China is a threat, and a possible enemy of the US. Is this a 4T sign? More on the issues thread.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/13/in...ner=ALTAVISTA1
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020713-92365049.htm
http://defenselink.mil/news/Jul2002/d20020712china.pdf

P.S. How long until Russia is viewed as a threat?

"The urge to dream, and the will to enable it is fundamental to being human and have coincided with what it is to be American." -- Neil deGrasse Tyson
intp '82er







Post#3110 at 07-13-2002 12:05 PM by Stonewall Patton [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 3,857]
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On 2002-07-13 08:55, R. Gregory '67 wrote:

Still, I have always thought of the New Republic as being in the Neo-Con camp too.
I believe it is the Third Way/New Democrat publication so there would be hardly any difference anyway.

Still, the dividing line between Neoconservative and New Democrat isn't all that big.
It's not. Can you picture that square political grid we looked at months ago? It was a variation on the Nolan grid with a square in the upper right for the Authoritarian Right and a square below it in the lower right for the Libertarian Right, then repeat for the left side (this is what I have been picturing for the quadrant analysis on this thread). Follow the vertical midline to the top (Authority). New Democrats/Third Wayers occupy a wedge bordering that line to the left (in the Authoritarian Left) and Neo-cons border that same line to the right (in the Authoritarian Right). New Democrats/Third Wayers and neo-cons border each other, i.e. they are kissing cousins. Bush-Rockefeller types are just to the right of the neo-cons, still in the Authoritarian Right, of course.

They are both corporatists seeking global empire but exhibit two major differences that I can think of:

1) Neo-cons are staunchly pro-Israel giving no quarter to the "Palestinians" while New Democrat/Third Wayers emphasize a negotiated peace settlement which serves both sides if not the "Palestinians" more.

2) Neo-cons shout that "national greatness" theme and want the United States to rule the world as a global empire. New Democrat/Third Wayers seek some sort of global federation of which the United States is part.








Post#3111 at 07-13-2002 12:12 PM by Child of Socrates [at Cybrarian from America's Dairyland, 1961 cohort joined Sep 2001 #posts 14,092]
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Whew!!! I go away for a day and all hell breaks out on this thread!

Re: the authoritarian/libertarian thing: I fell into the Authoritarian Left quadrant. I don't particularly like the "authoritarian" label either, but after reading Stonewall's definition, I can see where he's coming from. My tendency in my voting patterns has been to give government greater power than it probably deserves.

Before coming to this site, I tended, naturally, to surround myself with people who thought more or less as I do, though I never did quite agree with the more leftist members of my family, particularly some of my wilder Boomer cousins. :wink:

Reading the posts of Stonewall, Justin '77, Jon Carson, and other libertarian-leaning posters here has been new to me. I'm getting a real political education here, and I am starting to question a lot of what my liberal upbringing has meant. At 41, it may be hard for me to change my politics entirely, but I now have a better understanding of a point of view that I didn't have before.

And I'm sorry that justmom has decided to leave us because I was just starting to get a handle on how a conservative Xer female might be thinking (and I don't think there are very many conservative Xer females on this site, period!).









Post#3112 at 07-13-2002 12:31 PM by Brian Rush [at California joined Jul 2001 #posts 12,392]
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Stonewall:


And let us be unambiguously clear: government/business partnership is the defining aspect of fascism...which you never hear today but which was clearly understood and repeated ad nauseam by Mussolini et al. in the last saeculum. This specifically IS corporatism.

Hold on a minute; I think you're lumping too many things together here on the basis of a corporate/government interaction. The fact is that a strongly regulated capitalist economy has proven itself to be the only one that works well; neither unregulated capitalism nor socialism is anything like as good. So every advanced society today, no matter what else it proposes, is going to feature some kind of partnership between government and business. If that's fascism, then every government of every advanced nation in the world is fascist, and the word loses its utility and meaning. What's more, I do think it's useful to distinguish between George W. Bush and Benito Mussolini.


Given that some kind of government-business partnership exists, we have at least one and perhaps as many as three further questions to answer.


1. Which one is the senior, dominant partner? If it's business, then you have what might be called a corporate republic, existing for the purpose of maximizing corporate profit and power. That is not a fascist state properly so called (see below). If it's government, then you may or may not have a fascist state, depending on the answers to the remaining questions.


2. Assuming government to be the dominant partner, how well is government made accountable to the people? If its institutions are sufficiently democratic, and include sufficient protection of basic rights, then what you have is a democratic republic, not a fascist state. If not, then you may or may not have a fascist state depending on the answer to the last question.


3. Assuming a non-democratic government to be the dominant partner, what is the chief goal, the prime value and sense of the good, that the government pursues? If it's national greatness and power, the pursuit of empire, then you have a fascist state. If not (although I am hard-pressed to come up with examples of this), then you have something else.


Now, the United States partnership under every president from Reagan on has always featured corporate dominance. Business was the senior partner, and the government pursued mainly (and after the Cold War ended, exclusively) the profits and power of U.S. business as its goal. So we had a corporate republic, not a fascist state. We were actually closer to being a fascist state in the High. Recently that's begun to change, as a backlash against corporate abuses has set in and the democratic elements in our government have begun to reassert themselves. (Incidentally, this says to me, once again, that we have indeed entered the Crisis era. Corporate republics are not suitable to Fourth Turnings.)


Bush was elected, as Gore would have been elected, to be the head of a corporate republic. He is certainly no fascist. Neither was Clinton.


Third Way New Democrats, on the other hand, have a propensity for dictatorship as opposed to oligarchy. Although they are funded by the same oligarchy, they tend to favor a "strongman" to do their bidding. But also note that they do not exhibit the traditional fascist "nationalism" espoused by the Bush types.

I really don't see this. Bill Clinton was hardly a "strongman," let alone a "dictator." And as for fascist nationalism, one must imagine what he would have done if the WTC attack had occurred on his watch. Or what Bush would be like if it had not, on his.


Actually under the DLC, the Democrats represented the same primary constituency (corporate interests) as the Republicans, and the differences between them had more to do with the secondary constituencies that both also represented. With the Democrats, it was minorities, women, gays, and environmentalists; with the Republicans, it was the religious right. Some compromising occurred in each party between the secondary and primary constituents, but always the interests of business came first and the secondaries got the short end of the stick. Thus the Democrats did little to improve black people's economic circumstances, since that would have cut into corporate profits; and the Republicans paid mostly lip-service to the religious right agenda, since corporations either don't care about or actively oppose that agenda and a lot of people find it loathesome.


As a practical matter, I agree that there is little distinction to be made between the two. However, I also believe that is changing, and that corporate dominance is over (for the present). And I also maintain that neither party could properly be called fascistic.







Post#3113 at 07-13-2002 12:51 PM by Stonewall Patton [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 3,857]
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On 2002-07-13 10:12, Kiff '61 wrote:

Re: the authoritarian/libertarian thing: I fell into the Authoritarian Left quadrant. I don't particularly like the "authoritarian" label either, but after reading Stonewall's definition, I can see where he's coming from.
I thought about that as well and knew it would be confusing. Authority, as I am using it, is borrowed from that test to which we linked months ago on a different thread (the square grid, not the Nolan grid). It purely applies to governmental stucture and locus of power. It is not confined to dictators ruling arbitrarily, for example, although they certainly would fall in the Authoritarian half of the square.

Generally speaking, we know that left-libertarians and radicals are somehow lumped together, and we also know that liberals and Third Wayers are lumped somewhere else. Necessarily, the latter two fall in the Authoritarian Left and all that represents is activist government running things from the top-down...furthering Liberal goals in the case of Liberals.








Post#3114 at 07-13-2002 01:10 PM by Stonewall Patton [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 3,857]
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Brian:

I'll have to give you a short answer for now and I hope it might cover whatever ground necessary:

I agree that neither party is cleanly fascistic, but I do assert that both parties have become increasingly fascistic through the 3T. I think we can agree that all three factions discussed (New Democrats, neo-cons, and Bush types) are corporatist because they favor corporate consolidation of power. But it might be said that corporatism spans a scale from mercantilism to fascism. The Bush types are more oligarchic than the others and more mercantilist, and many call them mercantilist today. I do as well however mercantilist seems like an understatement with this present incarnation, does it not? Regardless, on a corporatist scale, the Bush types are probably closer to mercantilism than fascism.

The faction which really mirrors stereotypical fascists are the neo-cons for they are both corporatist and nationalist, seem to desire a strongman, and speak the same language about "national greatness." I think you have to conclude that the neo-cons are the closest to the fascist pole of the three in the corporatist range.

Where we probably disagree is with the New Democrats. They are corporatist but not nationalist. I see them as favoring a strongman (and I did not mean Clinton), but I guess that you do not. I would place them in between the Bush types and the neocons in the corporatist range however you might place the Bush types between the New Dems and neo-cons.

Regardless, I think our eeriest scenario is if "strongman" John McCain somehow gets into office with neo-con (neo-fascist) support. I know that we have discussed this before and you disagree. But I think the potential is there for a real nightmare. I do not mean to say that it is a given that we will have a bona fide fascist dictatorship. I simply mean to say that this is as close as we can possibly come to it and it is too close for my tastes.








Post#3115 at 07-13-2002 01:35 PM by AlexMnWi [at Minneapolis joined Jun 2002 #posts 1,622]
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On 2002-07-12 22:46, R. Gregory '67 wrote:
On 2002-07-12 22:19, AlexMnWi wrote

But some neo-conservatives were never democrats. Are there two kinds of neo-conservatives? Or did the formerly democratic part move over to third way in the 90s?
Dunno...there are some folks, like John McCain, who are probably best described as Neocons but are lifelong Republicans and have never been liberals. McCain's views line up with those of the Neocons. Some other Neocons, like Norman Podheretz of Commentary magazine, are former socialists.

My personal opinion about "Third Way" is that it is a media invention. The group they are referring to used to be called "Neoliberals" and before that they were called "Atari Democrats".

If you came up as a Neocon on the political quiz it just means that you agree with their positions more often than with any other group. One wouldn't have to be a former liberal who turned conservative during the Reagan era to agree with their positions. And that is, of course, based on the particular questions the author of that political quiz chose to ask.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: R. Gregory '67 on 2002-07-12 22:48 ]</font>
So is The New Republic for those who used to be liberals, and The Weekly Standard for those who have never been liberals?







Post#3116 at 07-13-2002 01:40 PM by AlexMnWi [at Minneapolis joined Jun 2002 #posts 1,622]
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On 2002-07-13 05:59, Stonewall Patton wrote:
On 2002-07-12 21:12, R. Gregory '67 wrote:

On 2002-07-12 18:07, AlexMnWi wrote:

Okay, I got Neo-Conservative but "The New Republic" seems quite leftist to me. Maybe someone who did not get Neo-Conservative *or* Third Way is not the best expert on where The New Republic stands?
The New Republic was leftist, at one time...40 or 50 years ago. The Neoconservative movement is led by former leftists who broke with the left during the last 2T and joined the conservatives, over their support of the Vietnam War. This happened because the left during the 1950s (GI-generation led) had by and large been supportive of the Cold War, but during the 1960s the "New Left" (led by late wave Silents with the rank and file mostly Boomers) came on the scene and turned antiwar and anti-draft. Unlike some other conservatives, whose main issues are moral and social issues (the Christian Right), or economic deregulation (free market think tanks), the Neoconservatives' big issue is a hawkish foreign policy. The New Republic was at the center of this movement.

There is an article on who the Neoconservatives are, at http://www.iraqwar.org/point3.htm

It's written by paleocons and not very sympathetic.

Alex, R. Gregory can correct me if I am wrong, but I think he/she means to say that the Weakly Standard is the neo-con rag (which it is). The New Republic is the Third Way rag.

All Third Way is in this country is New Democrat (i.e. Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and the DLC). New Democrats diverge from the traditional anti-business Democratic line in that they are willingly in bed with the corporations and are funded by the same sources as Bush-Rockefeller Republicans and neo-cons. New Democrat Third Wayers are even louder than neo-cons and Bush corporatists in praising the "virtues" of public/private (government/business) partnerships. And let us be unambiguously clear: government/business partnership is the defining aspect of fascism...which you never hear today but which was clearly understood and repeated ad nauseam by Mussolini et al. in the last saeculum. This specifically IS corporatism. The term "corporatism" does not refer to corporations. It comes from the Latin corpus, pl. corpora, and "corpora" was the term used in fascist theory to denote the bodies established for each industry in which government, management, and labor would meet to plan the economy. As Mussolini put it, corporatism is the merging of government and capital, and all power in the State. Corporatism is fascism.

New Democrat Third Wayers, neo-conservatives, and Bush Rockefeller Republicans are all corporatists, but some corporatists are more fascistic than others. For example, Bush-Rockefeller types represent oligarchic rule as opposed to dictatorial rule. A Bush White House simply fronts for and executes the will of a bunch of big wigs behind the scenes who wish to control the country and ultimately the world. The White House is simply the agent of a corporate elite. So do not look for Junior himself to fill the shoes of a stereotypical fascist dictator even though his administration's policies will often closely mirror those of historical fascist regimes. But do note that the "nationalism" of the Bush regime mirrors that of traditional fascist regimes.

Third Way New Democrats, on the other hand, have a propensity for dictatorship as opposed to oligarchy. Although they are funded by the same oligarchy, they tend to favor a "strongman" to do their bidding. But also note that they do not exhibit the traditional fascist "nationalism" espoused by the Bush types. So they pick up one fascist element over the Bush types but drop another. Our politics today is sort of a corporatist smorgasbord where you pick and choose the variety of fascist more to your liking.

When we get to the neo-cons, pay really close attention. Like the Bush-Rockefeller types, they are "nationalists" and in fact they cannot stop talking about "national greatness." But unlike the Bush-Rockefeller types, they exhibit a propensity for dictatorship versus oligarchy. They share this desire for a strongman with the New Democrat Third Wayers. So neo-cons in fact combine the distinct fascist elements of the Bush-Rockefeller types and New Democrat Third Wayers and offer the "total package" in terms of fascism in this saeculum.

What is even creepier is that neo-cons, being largely former Mensheviks, have made precisely the same journey from the Left as did the fascists of the last saeculum (as R. Gregory noted). Neo-cons represent this saeculum's closest parallel to traditional fascists of the past. You rarely hear them described in this manner (probably because they do not wear uniforms) but, objectively, the match is unmistakable. These folks are so power-hungry that they need to be watched with great caution as we enter the 4T. They have no respect for limits on their power, constitutional or otherwise; no respect for boundaries and the rights of others. All that matters is their "will to power."

I've kept thinking that The New Republic and The Weekly Standard could not both be Neo-Conservative, because the former seems a bit to the left of me, while the latter seems close to my political views.







Post#3117 at 07-13-2002 02:25 PM by [at joined #posts ]
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07-13-2002, 02:25 PM #3117
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Well, I've found the virgin.

Now (pun intended), where shall we have the sacrifice?









Post#3118 at 07-13-2002 02:25 PM by Stonewall Patton [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 3,857]
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07-13-2002, 02:25 PM #3118
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On 2002-07-13 11:40, AlexMnWi wrote:

I've kept thinking that The New Republic and The Weekly Standard could not both be Neo-Conservative, because the former seems a bit to the left of me, while the latter seems close to my political views.
New Republic = Third Way = Bill Clinton, Al Gore, DLC

WeAkly Standard = Neo-conservatism = Bill (buuurrrp) Bennett, Bill Kristol, David Horowitz, etc.








Post#3119 at 07-13-2002 02:29 PM by Stonewall Patton [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 3,857]
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07-13-2002, 02:29 PM #3119
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On 2002-07-13 11:45, Xer of Evil wrote:

By the way, I also came out as left-libertarian on the test. You told someone else that they were the only one. I think that #2 and #3 were radical and libertarian.
I told R. Gregory because s/he is the only one who had posted results at that point. However Robert Reed is certainly in the Libertarian Left as well.

Cannot tell for sure without your full rankings. But unless you have one of those funky spreads, it looks like you are in the Libertarian Left with a Libertarian Right meld. You and R. Gregory ought to be in about the same place.








Post#3120 at 07-13-2002 03:03 PM by Jesse Manoogian [at The edge of the world in all of Western civilization joined Oct 2001 #posts 448]
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07-13-2002, 03:03 PM #3120
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On 2002-07-10 10:50, Chris Loyd '82 wrote:
Sounds like an opportunity to bust out the political selector.

#1 Libertarian
#2 Left-libertarian
#3 Radical
#4 Paleo-libertarian
#5 Paleoconservative
#6 Conservative
#7 Neoconservative
#8 Centrist
#9 Third Way
#10 Liberal



Go here to see more people's responses.







Post#3121 at 07-13-2002 03:10 PM by [at joined #posts ]
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"Neo-cons shout that "national greatness" theme and want the United States to rule the world as a global empire." --Stonewall Goebbels

Again, this is just pure bull. New Conservatives ascribe to the John Winthrop ideal--championed by Ronald Reagan as well-- of America as a "city upon a hill". This ideal has no basis in any notion of ruling "the world as a global empire" at all. None. Zip, zero, nadda!

It has everything to do with: a) A belief that American self interest in the world must be defended, and b) A belief that if all nations of the world were to imitate our form of Constitutionally limited government, their people, their nation and indeed the world would be a better place.

That's all.

But, as usual, Stonewall Goebbels is much more interested in spreading propaganda and lies than in the truth.






<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Marc Lamb on 2002-07-13 13:28 ]</font>







Post#3122 at 07-13-2002 03:16 PM by [at joined #posts ]
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07-13-2002, 03:16 PM #3122
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"Bush was elected, as Gore would have been elected, to be the head of a corporate republic. He is certainly no fascist. Neither was Clinton." --Brian Rush (responding to Mr. Patton's charge of fascism in the White House)

I applaude Mr. Rush for pointing this out. Again, it's just more deception, lies and ridiculous propaganda emanating from the master himself, Stonewall Goebbels.




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Marc Lamb on 2002-07-13 13:27 ]</font>







Post#3123 at 07-13-2002 03:22 PM by Jesse Manoogian [at The edge of the world in all of Western civilization joined Oct 2001 #posts 448]
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On 2002-07-10 22:28, Agent 24601984 wrote:
#1 Liberal
#2 Radical
#3 Third Way
#4 Left-libertarian
#5 Centrist
#6 Neoconservative
#7 Libertarian
#8 Paleoconservative
#9 Conservative
#10 Paleo-libertarian
... I would have guessed I was more libertarian or paleocon than neocon, but at least they got my top 2-3 right
That's strange...how did he get libertarian higher than neocon there? The only issues I know where libertarians and neocons disagree are issues where William would take the libertarian position.







Post#3124 at 07-13-2002 03:22 PM by Stonewall Patton [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 3,857]
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07-13-2002, 03:22 PM #3124
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On 2002-07-13 13:03, Jesse Manoogian wrote:

#1 Libertarian
#2 Left-libertarian
#3 Radical
#4 Paleo-libertarian
#5 Paleoconservative
#6 Conservative
#7 Neoconservative
#8 Centrist
#9 Third Way
#10 Liberal
Pretty cool, Jesse. You are riding that Libertarian Right and Left line so closely that it is difficult to tell which is your primary quadrant. But there is consistency at the bottom of your list. You clean out the Authoritarian Left quadrant as a bloc dead last (and clean out the Authoritarian Right quadrant as a bloc immediately prior). So you have a clear suggestion that your weakest quadrant is the Authoritarian Left. That suggests that your primary is the opposite of the Authoritarian Left which is the Libertarian Right. You are Libertarian Right with a Libertarian Left meld.

I am going to have to start keeping a tally on a document. But I think we are well over 90% with Libertarian Left as either primary or meld. That really ought to be the key to this place.








Post#3125 at 07-13-2002 03:41 PM by Stonewall Patton [at joined Sep 2001 #posts 3,857]
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07-13-2002, 03:41 PM #3125
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Seeing as we have to compile this data at this point to keep track and make sense of it, I went back to retrieve the posted results from the beginning and discovered that, unbeknownst to the rest of us, Mr. Saari had extended his original post containing his top three to include all ten:


On 2002-07-10 14:05, Virgil K. Saari wrote:

1 Paleo-conservative
2 Paleolibertarian
3 Conservative
4 Libertarian
5 Radical
6 Left Libertarian
7 Neo Conservative
8 Liberal
9 Centrist
10 Third Way
Mr. Saari is obviously in the Libertarian Right for starters. For his meld, he initially flirts with the Authoritarian Right and then proceeds to take the Libertarian Left as a bloc (no way that a paleo-con will touch those neo-cons...hehehe). So Mr. Saari is Libertarian Right with a Libertarian Left meld.

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