Why, they both call people race traitors!
Well, OK, in Robinson’s case he called Colin Powell ‘an immoral traitor to his race’, but we all know what that means*. I mention this because he’s involved in this Aristide conspiracy theory, and I just felt like reminding everyone of the essential moonbattiness of the fellow. Blessedly for him (and us, of course), he’s now permanently on the island of St. Kitts, where the sun is warm and the Caucasians rare, and it is my fond hope that we continue to have a society where he feels deeply unwelcome. You know, one where a Texas Republican President can make a former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Secretary of State and casually note that he and his National Security Advisor were able to avoid detection on their way to Iraq because they looked like a normal couple.
Can I freshen that drink for ya, Randall? No, no need to chug it: you’ve got all the time in the world.
Moe
*Well, OK, two things: they both call people race traitors and they both hate Colin Powell.
Does comparing one’s opponents to the KKK also violate Godwin’s Law? Or is it only if you compare them to the National Socialists Worker’s Party?
“Does comparing one’s opponents to the KKK also violate Godwin’s Law?”
Ummm… not that I’m aware of. Besides, if it’s OK to call actual Nazis Nazis, surely it’s permissable to compare a blatant racist to a bunch of blatant racists.
If Godwin’s Law is to have any practical value, it has to be to discourage people from routinely comparing their opponents to the worst examples of persons who had similar views to their opponents but who are distinguished because they engaged in a particularly egregious action to carry them out.
Calling someone who is actually a member of a specific group a member of that group is one thing (e.g. saying that someone who is actually a Nazi is a Nazi) but when you say “you have similar views to this group (KKK) so I’ll call you a member of that group even though you didn’t actually do any of the things for which they are most reviled (e.g. lynching, cross-burnings, etc.),” it would seem to violate the spirit of Godwin’s Law.
Or to put it another way, socialism and racism are both evil as are the people who believe in or practice either ideology. However there is a difference between the evil of a run-of-the-mill socialist versus the sort who threw people into concentration camps (e.g. Bolsheviks, National Socialist Worker’s Party, Maoists, etc.) or the sort of racist who favors governmental discrimination (e.g. supporters of Jim Crow who discriminate against blacks and supporters of affirmative action who discriminate against whites and Asians) versus the sort who actively went out and murdered people.
Unless this fellow has a history of calling for violence against persons of a different skin color, it would not seem appropriate to compare him to the KKK – for to do so would be to minimize the particularly egregiousness of their actions which distinguish them from most (nonviolent) racists.
Or to put it another way, socialism and racism are both evil as are the people who believe in or practice either ideology.
*raises eyebrow* “Socialism is evil”? Now there’s a nonsense statement and a half. I’ve seen you make a lot of stupid comments, Thorley, but equating socialism to racism is proof you live in fantasyland.
There was probably a bit of mischief in Mr. Winston’s casual statement, but one is left to wonder: When does the body count accountable to a certain philosophy of political economy make it worthy of the appellation “evil”? Socialism is up near 100 million.
Paul: Anyone who simply declares (as Thorley just did) that – for example – Eugene V. Debs, Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., Pablo Picasso, Clarence Darrow, Dorothy Day, H G Wells, Harry Houdini, Adrienne Rich, Rosa Luxemburg, George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin, John Lennon, Dashiell Hammet, Patrick Stewart,Pete Seeger, Robert Oppenheimer, Marie Curie, George Orwell and Susan B Anthony – not to mention every single one of the students in Tiananmen square – are all evil, because they’re all socialists, is living in some kind of strange fantasyland that I do not want to visit.
Let me understand correctly: the, say, Swedes, are responsible for the deathes under Lenin and his heirs around the world? Equally so is much of the British Labour Party? A little great-grandma in Brooklyn is similarly responsible?
How is it different to reason as above than to reason that a Republican in the 1930s was responsible for Hitler, or a Republican of recent years shares responsibility for the dead under Baby Doc Duvalier, or either Somoza, or of Efrain Rios Montt, of Ferdinand Marcos?
It’s one thing to entirely disagree with Socialist economic and political theory — that’s a debatable point — but to directly hold responsible people who believe in an economic system that, whatever its merits or demerits, has yet to throw anyone into a labor or re-education camp (Swedes, British Labour members, American socialists), with people who actually did engage in such throwing, seems to ignore actual, and rather important, distinctions between two groups of people. Just as it would be if one ignored the rather important distinctions between authoritarian-minded conservatives in the West, and Fascists.
Jesurgislac wrote:
Yep.
Nope
Actually that’s all Jesurgislac seems to be capable of making.
No, it is not. Both are collectivist ideologies who practice the sacrifice of the rights of the individual for the good of the “group.” The racist defines the “group” as members of the same ethnicity or race whereas the socialist merely defines the group as the State or class or “public”(1). Morally they are identically repellant to anyone who believes in individual rights however socialists do seem to do more damage in terms of enslaving and murdering more people particularly in the twentieth century.
TW
(1) A term which is malleable enough to include or exclude whichever sub-group is in or out of favor at the moment.
Gary Farber wrote:
I think that I made the distinction between the two rather clear in my second post. Yes it is true that a thief who uses the government to steal other people’s property (e.g. democratic socialists) is not quite as bad as one who uses the government to murder others and steal their property (e.g. Bolsheviks and national socialists) but s/he is nonetheless evil, albeit a lesser one.
That’s it, Thorley. You’re living in a fantasyland. Next time, take the red pill.
Gary Farber wrote:
Why would a Republican in the 1930’s be responsible for Hitler as (a) Republicans were pretty much out of power when Hitler arose in 1933 and (b) there was no alliance between the two?
In those cases (although methinks that some of them were bipartisan) we chose what we thought was the lesser evil at the time when the most likely alternative seemed to be a Soviet puppet State. In which case we supported a strong man who was anti-communist (but not a good guy) in the hopes that he could be ousted or eventually open the way for reform as happened in Taiwan and South Korea rather than risk the country becoming and remaining a socialist dictatorship as happened in China, North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam.
Why would a Republican in the 1930’s be responsible for Hitler as (a) Republicans were pretty much out of power when Hitler arose in 1933 and (b) there was no alliance between the two?
Not to mention c) that Republicans reject nearly everything about Nazism. I say “nearly everything” because having the trains run on time isn’t inherently bad. Having the full trains running on time to concentration camps is.
Why would a Republican in the 1930’s be responsible for Hitler as (a) Republicans were pretty much out of power when Hitler arose in 1933 and (b) there was no alliance between the two?
It makes exactly as much sense as saying that Charlie Chaplin and Helen Keller are evil, Thorley.
Good point (but I believe it was Italian Fascists who claimed to have made the trains run on time), other than possibly racism(1) and genocide(2), the Nanny State Left really has much more in common with the National Socialists than the American Right which is generally pro-market, pro-gun rights, and more individualistic and pro-decentralization in areas like education, health care, etc. There really isn’t anything that a conservative would find of value in the Nazi party platform, but there does seem to be quite a bit of compatibility with much of the Left.
No one of course is saying that most Nanny Statists are Nazis in that it is probably not the goal of the former to throw people in concentration camps and murder them. However if you want to play the Nazi card, you’ll have do with the fact that they two are playing most of and with the same hand.
TW
(1) The Left does generally support racial preferences and setasides while only disagreeing with White Supremacists as to who should receive said preferences.
(2) This is generally true of most on the Left with the exception of the Green Shirts who adamantly anti-GMO (thereby condemning millions to starvation) and some of the pro-abortionists.
Jesurgislac and Mr. Farber:
Obviously Social Democracy and Socialism are not the same thing. Mr. Winston has it about right: the difference is between a thief and murderer. Full-scale Socialism has never been implemented without concomitant bloodletting.
My word; the battle of the ideologies is in full force today. Let’s try to keep the mass ad homs a little less massive, folks.
Blame it on Moe, he started it 😉
Clausewitz: “Direct annihilation of the enemy’s forces must always be the dominant consideration.”
So if a Social Democrat, to use Cella’s term, is a “thief” compared to Communist murderers, then what does that make the Religious Right in comparison to the Taliban? “Witch-burners vs Crusaders”? Or “Meddlesome busybodies vs. Murdering Fanatics”?
Or maybe that whole line of comparison (along with the Clausewitz quote) is just idiotic.
JKC wrote:
Mortal enemies as it has typically been American social and religious conservatives who are staunchly and unapologetically pro-US and pro-Israel (far more so than most on the Left, I might add).
Sorry but that witch burning thing of a couple of centuries ago was strictly a Massachusetts affair. If you have a complaint regarding that, take it up with John Kerry 😉
Really, how so?
The only thing “idiotic” was your straw man, which failed to even make a valid comparison. If you want a group who is anti-Western civilization and determined to “protect” “developing” cultures from the spread of Western ideals and our culture, you would find a more valid comparison between the Taliban and the anti-globalism movement, which is pretty much solely on the Left.
So, Thorley is accusing Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Pablo Picasso, Clarence Darrow, and H G Wells – not to mention every single one of the students in Tiananmen square – of being thieves? Would Thorley like to explain just what they stole, and when?
And Thorley-
What about the early Christian church as recounted in Acts? Remember, “all things in common?” Who exactly did they steal from?