How stupid are Canadian voters?

[Dr. Medulla]

Of course. You set precedents for violation of civil liberties by wrapping it in altruistic garb. I don't think it's an accident that both the Nazis and Italian Fascists originally sold themselves as Socialist workers parties when they were anything but. Imagine the power a radicalized Canadian right could wield using the precedents of intrusion the CHRC have already established. That's why a lot of principled conservatives opposed the crap the Bushies tried to pull. The knife cuts both ways. They know that the Establishment will put on its Democratic mask when conditions require it.

I'm not sure its about one side of the spectrum legitimizing intrusion and providing cover in the future for the other. Those kinds of niceties seem past tense. Except for the mouth breathers on the right (mostly the right, anyway), everyone knows that govts of all spectrums use the state to intrude and don't really give a fuck about precedent. Which isn't to say that Harper wouldn't use the CHRC nonsense for his own future purposes, just that he doesn't need the precedent. He really is a man without shame. Our current election, for example, is arguably illegal. One of the few universally acclaimed laws his govt passed was to set fixed election dates so that governing parties couldn't call snap elections to take advantage of the polls. We were set to have an election next October, but Harper, reading the polls and probably forecasts of a downturn in the economy, ignored that law—his law—and dissolved parliament. I'm rather amazed that someone didn't pursue a hearing with the Supreme Court well in advance to test the constitutionality of the election law and try to block Harper's ploy.

The breathtaking truth about true Power is that it has no ideology. It sees ideology as a possible limit on its ability to get things done. Power is its own justification. The violations of public courtesy and basic respect that the Yippies established have been taken to the bank over and over and over by the Savage Weiners and Glenn Becks in the media. The Yippies pulled that crap for about 18 months and the CorpoRight have been assraping the idea of civil society with it for 40 years running.

Both David Brock and Thomas Frank (and certainly many others) have written about modern authoritarian Republicanism grabbed the tactics of the student left from the 60s. You either have to scream or laugh when you hear the average right wing troll denouncing lefties or liberals without realizing how much of their movement was built from radical left blueprints.

Don't forget Kevin Phillips, Andrew Sullivan and Paul Craig Roberts. To me, all the best- and most effective- political commentary of the past 8 years has come from principled conservatives outraged by the shameless Neo-Trotskyism of the Bush Administration and its Neocon/Theocon cronies.

Forgot about Phillips when I posted in the 9-11 thread. His American Theocracy is a fine and sobering analysis of three of the heads of the hydra choking the American people. I've only read a handful of Sullivan's blog posts—they seem pretty gutter juvenile. But, yes, I agree that the best critiques of Bush have come from the right. John Dean's last three books are so harsh, you'd think he worked for Ted Kennedy.

[Rat Patrol]

Both David Brock and Thomas Frank (and certainly many others) have written about modern authoritarian Republicanism grabbed the tactics of the student left from the 60s. You either have to scream or laugh when you hear the average right wing troll denouncing lefties or liberals without realizing how much of their movement was built from radical left blueprints.

Brock's book is a very good one about illustrating that, even though it leaves much to be desired explaining why he really swung so far left, right, and back left again. Neoconservatism was cooked up as a distinct philosophy in universities in the late-60's. Paul Wolfowitz was one of the big architects when he was at Cornell, Univ. of Chicago, and Yale. All of the big neocons in the Bush Administration--Richard Perle, Scooter Libbywere students at that time who coagulated around Wolfowitz. They in turn learned were taught by a bunch of hardcore Cold War architects who went into academia. Wolfowitz's and Perle's doctoral advisor at U Chicago was Albert Wohlstetter, who was a power behind the throne on the War Production Board during WWII then helped himself to the spoils as a consultant/lobbyist for a bunch of military contractors before becoming one of Kennedy's top Cuban policy advisors and author of a bunch of academic papers on pre-emptive purging of communism from Cuba. The guys noted as the big voices for neocon policy in the media, like Irving Kristol (prof at NYU for 20 years)...all academics. And the think tanks they founded were all modeled on academic societies...just with a military lobbying twist. Pretty much all the people in the whole Bush-era universe of neocon machinery crossed paths in academia and Nixon's siphoning of academics into his staff youth movement from the mid-60's to early-70's. And most of these guys also studied under profs who started as lefties before turning rightward in the 50's. Go back a couple generations on the academic geneology of these Iraq fucknuts and you get some truly radical Marxist minds driving the thought patterns.

For all its anti-left, anti-student, anti-intellectualism bent this was no less a student movement than any of the better-publicized liberal activism efforts...these guys just worked the inside channels because Nixon was looking to embrace anything that counteracted the radical left, and they all ended up right in the Nixon and Ford administrations while still in their 20's. Which was pretty much the goal...they played off Nixon to basically get the best career jump-start available in terms of attaining political power at that time. But they're all still academic wonks and theorists by nature and all still think in those terms...and any truckly Republican-voting dumbass who actually cared to look at that would see an intellectual elitism at work not seen since the 60's left radicals turned off most of middle America. Neocons simply sold it a lot better as an anti-intellectual movement, and the selection of a near-literally retarded front man for their first purebred President just highlights how effective that diversion has been. But these shits are wonkier than anyone who's been in power on the left the last 30 years after their 60's radicals became too radioactive to ever gain serious traction with the electorate.

Every last thing about the trevails of the American right-wing today makes perfect sense with a good read about the academic lives, upbringings, and philosophical theory of its practitioners...it all falls completely into place. And makes it impossible to criticize left-intellectuals in exclusion to right-intellectuals driving the policies...because behind the scenes they're EXACTLY THE SAME. And by that I mean BOTH should be blowtorched continuously with equal vigor for the crimes against humanity their indulgent and elitist theoretical fantasies have wrought on the world and the opportunism spawned in practice.

Find a good book with a detached enough perspective and read up...you'll never look at your world the same way again. And I say this as a Sociology B.A. who fucking hated theory and philosophy and only really found case studies and applied studies in my wheelhouse. Without even getting too arcane into theory that'll make most people get tired trying to plow through, just figuring out what makes these people tick and how all political power seems to draw from the same poisoned well and common academic origin, merely differentiated across the left-right spectrum when opportunism takes over and perverts the philosophical perversions...you almost can't understand what's happening to the world without it. Get informed, no matter what your persuasion...there's food for thought in this subject for everyone out there.

[IkarisOne]

Both David Brock and Thomas Frank (and certainly many others) have written about modern authoritarian Republicanism grabbed the tactics of the student left from the 60s. You either have to scream or laugh when you hear the average right wing troll denouncing lefties or liberals without realizing how much of their movement was built from radical left blueprints.

Brock's book is a very good one about illustrating that, even though it leaves much to be desired explaining why he really swung so far left, right, and back left again. Neoconservatism was cooked up as a distinct philosophy in universities in the late-60's. Paul Wolfowitz was one of the big architects when he was at Cornell, Univ. of Chicago, and Yale. All of the big neocons in the Bush Administration--Richard Perle, Scooter Libbywere students at that time who coagulated around Wolfowitz. They in turn learned were taught by a bunch of hardcore Cold War architects who went into academia. Wolfowitz's and Perle's doctoral advisor at U Chicago was Albert Wohlstetter, who was a power behind the throne on the War Production Board during WWII then helped himself to the spoils as a consultant/lobbyist for a bunch of military contractors before becoming one of Kennedy's top Cuban policy advisors and author of a bunch of academic papers on pre-emptive purging of communism from Cuba. The guys noted as the big voices for neocon policy in the media, like Irving Kristol (prof at NYU for 20 years)...all academics. And the think tanks they founded were all modeled on academic societies...just with a military lobbying twist. Pretty much all the people in the whole Bush-era universe of neocon machinery crossed paths in academia and Nixon's siphoning of academics into his staff youth movement from the mid-60's to early-70's. And most of these guys also studied under profs who started as lefties before turning rightward in the 50's. Go back a couple generations on the academic geneology of these Iraq fucknuts and you get some truly radical Marxist minds driving the thought patterns.

For all its anti-left, anti-student, anti-intellectualism bent this was no less a student movement than any of the better-publicized liberal activism efforts...these guys just worked the inside channels because Nixon was looking to embrace anything that counteracted the radical left, and they all ended up right in the Nixon and Ford administrations while still in their 20's. Which was pretty much the goal...they played off Nixon to basically get the best career jump-start available in terms of attaining political power at that time. But they're all still academic wonks and theorists by nature and all still think in those terms...and any truckly Republican-voting dumbass who actually cared to look at that would see an intellectual elitism at work not seen since the 60's left radicals turned off most of middle America. Neocons simply sold it a lot better as an anti-intellectual movement, and the selection of a near-literally retarded front man for their first purebred President just highlights how effective that diversion has been. But these shits are wonkier than anyone who's been in power on the left the last 30 years after their 60's radicals became too radioactive to ever gain serious traction with the electorate.

Every last thing about the trevails of the American right-wing today makes perfect sense with a good read about the academic lives, upbringings, and philosophical theory of its practitioners...it all falls completely into place. And makes it impossible to criticize left-intellectuals in exclusion to right-intellectuals driving the policies...because behind the scenes they're EXACTLY THE SAME. And by that I mean BOTH should be blowtorched continuously with equal vigor for the crimes against humanity their indulgent and elitist theoretical fantasies have wrought on the world and the opportunism spawned in practice.

Find a good book with a detached enough perspective and read up...you'll never look at your world the same way again. And I say this as a Sociology B.A. who fucking hated theory and philosophy and only really found case studies and applied studies in my wheelhouse. Without even getting too arcane into theory that'll make most people get tired trying to plow through, just figuring out what makes these people tick and how all political power seems to draw from the same poisoned well and common academic origin, merely differentiated across the left-right spectrum when opportunism takes over and perverts the philosophical perversions...you almost can't understand what's happening to the world without it. Get informed, no matter what your persuasion...there's food for thought in this subject for everyone out there.

The Academic/Cultural Left bent over and took it forever when it subscribed to the "Personal is Political" bullshit. Then it became a morass of coercive identity politics completely alien to anyone outside the ivory tower. But it did so out of a perpetual state of terror- both of the power structure that wasn't having any of their economic ideas and the militant ethnic and lifestyle factions who browbeat the poor, good-hearted liberals in the university administrations into kowtowing to every political fad that blew by. The whole idea of "progression" is self-defeating, anyhow. It always devolves into a Balkanized jumble of eccentrics trying to be more outre than their peers. Look at what happened to Antioch for an extreme example. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/06/13/antioch or http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/P ... 6jqecg.asp (beware, WS is the neocon bible, but once in a while lets some meaningful journalism slip through the cracks).

It's the exact same stupidity that lead to Combat Rock, come to think of it.

[Dr. Medulla]

As always, RP, your lengthy posts are worth the read. The success of the Republican party since 1980 is one of superior PR work—utterly exceptional and pathbreaking albeit mostly degrading—rather than the success of ideas. That the coalition of big business, libertarians, and evangelicals/social conservatives lasted as long as it has is a testament to the power of mass self-hypnosis.

[Inder]

Very interesting post, Ratty.