----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com>
>But I guess Chuck is right, the more you look into this thinking, the
>more confused and ludicrous it looks (my words really :))
Our gang still uses rhetoric of freedom, pluralism, and individualism to describe what we're defending in Our Way of Life - that's what the Terrorists hate about us after all. The Nazis, though, were very explicitly anti-democratic, anti-pluralistic, and anti-individualistic. To the Bush gang, the state is supposed to reflect or subordinate itself to free individuals; to the Nazis, the individual was supposed to subordinate him- or herself to the state. Of course the Bushies are full of unfreedom and schemes to circumscribe individual freedom of thought and action, but still that's a big rhetorical difference. How does that fit in with the Weimar/Strauss/Shickelgruber analogy?
Doug
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The neo-mercantilist/strong state-authoritarianism rhetoric/policies of the Bushies has just as much, if not more, to do with the US tradition of Republicanism as it does with German sociologists/political theorists:
"'An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good. It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants." [the Federalist papers]
Now if KM had only researched and written in the Library of Congress.........