Last Hope
POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Friday, January 20, 2006 00:03
VIEWED: 2804
PAGE 3 of 3
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DT You have a problem which is that you arbitarily redefine the meaning of words to suit your pre existant biases.
I certainly hope not. I may on occassion be wrong, but I'm by no means being deliberately deceptive. My use of the word "socialist" for example is entirely correct by all dictionaries and encyclopedia I have checked, and is perfectly historically accurate. For people who have a problem with it, I would like to suggest that it is perfectly possible that someone else is lying to you, perhaps socialist parties who don't want to be associated with they're fellow socialists, and even their own past. If this is about some other word, please let me know.
My calling Scoop Jackson a socialist might have been overstepping it, for that I apologize. But there are two reasons I was led to this conclusion, maybe I should have said socialist-leaning democrat.
1. If I am not sorely mistaken, Jackson supported wage and price controls and an expansion of the new deal towards a goal of guaranteed employment. This is a fairly socialist bent. Also, he supported an agressive social militarist policy, social change through military action, that I usually consider a part of socialism because of the number of socialist govts. in the past which have used this tactics, and the degree to which other ideologies do not use it, but still perhaps I should state this separately.
2. His campaign was supported by a large number of otherwise socialists, and a decent number of socialists-gone-democrat.
While I'm no scholar and have way too much work to do to waste too much time on this, I certainly believe these things all to be the case, and to be pertinent. I can't help but feel to some extent, that since you already know I put in an 80 hour week, your pressure to the level of higher research that I can't possibly match is an effort to win the argument on what's more or less an intellectualist point. My lack of a bibliography is a reflection of my lack of time and not an indication that my facts are false. I would counter argue that this is in fact a rhetorical ploy.
"Scoop" Jackson was more of an FDR Democrat and much less of a Carter Democrat. Saying 'left' and 'right' within the democratic party is really deceptive because different people have different ideas of left and right.
I, for one, think of hawkishness as a left trait, and automatically rank a hawk as being to the left of a non-hawk. I have a decent background in history which strongly supports me in this conclusion. Hawks tend to have a social agenda an tend to be more socialist in their economic policies, or have tended to in history. I did a tally recently and came up with about 90% of the time in the post monarchical era.
People on the left on the other hand tend to think of hawks as to the right of non-hawks. It's quite probable that they have a rationale for doing so, which I don't understand or possibly agree with, but that's not the point, the fact is they do it, and say that Kerry-hawks are to the right of Boxer-doves. I would probably argue the point, but that's just the point: people are going to disagree on who within a particular political school or party is right or left, so I can only say scoop jackson is more fdr and less carter, and that that is true in his economic as well as his military stance.
Carter was diplomatic and pro-corporate; FDR was militarist and pro-govt controlled economy. Without arguing that understanding, Scoop was far enough in the FDR direction that he was perhaps on the other side of FDR, more in the FDR direction away from carter than FDR himself was, and so if there is a political axis there, whatever it be, within the democratic party, Scoop was pretty close to one far end, and that that end was most akin to socialist in its ideology.
Next, I see the argument of neoconism as a thinly veiled zionism, and there may be an element there, but I don't buy it. It seems to me that this is one issue for the neocons, but that it is more part of a greater picture. Wolfowitz and Perle are not just disciple
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With respect I find it hard to believe that someone who feels the need to monopolise every thread with 1000 word posts is too pressed for time to document his sources. You find the time to make these assertions I think you can find the time to support them.
I went looking anyway. Not surprisingly the Wikiopedia enteries echo yours in almost all areas. I don't know if you wrote them or if it just so happens that your favoured "just so" source happens to agree with you so exactly, perhaps wiki was your "extensive reading" into the subject.
Further afield we discover the following. Max Shachtman was a Trotskyist who in 1940 broke with Trotsky over their interpretation of the Soviet Union. Trotsky viewed the USSR as a worker's state that had degenerated, he hoped a second revolution would put things right. Strachtman believed that the old Capitalist order had been reinstated just with the state burocrat as the "owner" and as such the USSR was an Imperial power to be resisted. Initially Strachtman saw capitalist America and "state captialist" Soviet Union as being equally corrupt and championed a third way. When the USSR signed an accord with Nazi Germany he decided that America was the lesser of the two evils. Over time he became not only a critic of the USSR but also fervently anticommunist to the point of supporting the Vietnam War, something that cost him a lot of credability.
While only Wikopeadia follows your "join the dots" style of thinking to link Strachtman directly with Neoconism, the "four degrees of seperation" of the two has been noted by writers on the right and the left. On the right the so called Paleo-conservatives use it to cast doubt on the conservative "purity" of neocons, on the left Strachtman is being seen more and more as someone that went too far to the right. In essence both sides see the other as the "corrupting influence."
The problem with associating Neoconism with either Strauss or Strachtman is this, were these men alive, would they nescessarily agree with what was being done? I'm not so sure either would be comfortable in having their heritage linked in this way. However, even if we take your "linkage" as 100% there is still the problem that Strachtman was seen as a devisive maverick by much of the American left during his lifetime. I don't see how someone could make a public break with some organisations and ideas and it be fair to link his later actions with those earlier affiliations.
As to Perle, I'm not suggesting he is a Zionist or that his ethnic background has anything to do with this. You have to look at decisions in the context in which they were made. Perle seems to have a genuine belief that the fate of Israel and the US are linked. I doubt very much that he's recently come to that conclusion. I read an article during the last election about Bush courting the Jewish vote. Apparently at least in Florida the Jewish vote is both important and principly Democratic. Since Florida was again expected to be a swing state Bush targeted those voters. Now here's the information I hadn't known. From 1948 through until the early 1970's very few American Jews cared much at all about Israel, and in fact several prominent American Jewish interlectuals opposed the Zionist state. That changed because of the various Arab attacks until today most American Jews are broadly supportive of Israel.
This means that Jackson was a supporter of Israel at a time when even large numbers of American Jews were undecided. If you were Perle looking for a Washington staff position at that time you would have very little choice as to who to work for if you wanted to work for a pro-Israel representative.
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Fletch,
1. I'm a pretty quick typist, I take like 10 min breaks maybe 3 times a day to respond to posts and emails.
2. Wikipedia is my source for much of this, it's a great source, I googled a lot of things I found there, and went from there, everything I found backed that up.
Anti-Communist is not anti-socialist. Yes, Shachtman thought communism was state capitalism, I ran into that somewhere also, but I don't remember where.
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While only Wikopeadia follows your "join the dots" style of thinking to link Strachtman directly with Neoconism, the "four degrees of seperation" of the two has been noted by writers on the right and the left. On the right the so called Paleo-conservatives use it to cast doubt on the conservative "purity" of neocons, on the left Strachtman is being seen more and more as someone that went too far to the right. In essence both sides see the other as the "corrupting influence."
wikipedia as in wiki.
I think this was how I painted it, born of the socialist left, and mutated into something else. Only some shachmanites became neo-conservatives, there are a fair number of them still in the democratic party. But both sides are more like one another than like socialist or traditional liberalism or conservatism.
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The problem with associating Neoconism with either Strauss or Strachtman is this, were these men alive, would they nescessarily agree with what was being done? I'm not so sure either would be comfortable in having their heritage linked in this way. However, even if we take your "linkage" as 100% there is still the problem that Strachtman was seen as a devisive maverick by much of the American left during his lifetime. I don't see how someone could make a public break with some organisations and ideas and it be fair to link his later actions with those earlier affiliations.
Simplistic conspiracy analysis annoys me. People are dynamic, they change, memebership of groups change, and people have different degrees of devotion to a cause, and that also changes, as do some of the goals of the cause. The reality is that Shachtmanism became an ideology as soon as he put it forth and other people followed it. Whether or not those people were *true* to Shachtman or whether he was *true* to Marx and Trotsky isn't the issue. People have ideas of their own, they don't just steal, and plans and movement evolve over time. The connection is that this is where the neocon movement originated, and it still carries many of those ideas. Over time they picked up other followers, many communists and socialists, many hawkish democrats and republicans, and even some hawkish far right religious types. But everyone who came on board signed on to the idea, and also, they changed the idea by signing on. This always happens. The result is something new was created, and evolved.
I read an article about Bush and the jewish vote, and it mentioned that he received a smaller % of the jewish vote than any president in American history. It was somewhere in the teen%s. That taken into account, the political democratic value of zionism should probably be more or less discounted. I think from a military vantagepoint it makes more sense. I'm not arguing that Perle is not a zionist, I think he is. I think that it's a mistake to say that that is the guiding point of the philosophy.
Here is how I see it: I read an article just after columbine that said matrix terminator basketball diaries et al were to blame because those all have people in black trenchcoats blowing people away. I thought 'yeah, if they'd never seen those movies, they would have worn something else when they blew people away.' So my thought on zionism is, yeah, they're zionists, that's why they use israel. If they had been lebanese they would have used lebanon. As for hard to find a zionist in the Senate, I think this is a stretch. Pro-zionism has been the official position of the US govt. since Truman.
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Anyway...
I'm really turning on to this idea of a core group of us working both sides of the phony left-right split. They've pretty much set things up so all we'll ever get is a choice between the two, so why not push our way into where the real decisions are made? I'm still not sure that's possible, but maybe it's worth trying after all. The system is currently stacked so heavily against a third party candidate that it's essentially impossible.
If we keep letting the same left/right assholes run things we're likely to create a nation I no long want to be a part of.
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Sgt. X.
Well said. I've done the number crunching and it would take about 10 million on either side, if everyone was organized to vote in the primaries. It seems like a staggering number, but there are several things which will work in our favor:
1. Online communities are huge and develop quickly. Bush only got ten million votes in the '00 primary, and it was almost all from the christian right. Many online communities are much larger than that, but they just aren't organized. ICQ acquired 14 million members in it's first 8 months, so it's definitely possible to muster that kind of force.
2. There are many people in each party who already feel the way we do, so the amount of persuasion needed will be relatively small. Basically the only thing that you need to prove is that you can actually do it, or perhaps that it *can* be done.
3. There are a good number of already elected officials on both sides who despise the party leaderships with a firey passion. Many of these people are already politically on the pro-libertarian, anti-war, pro-environment sides, and I get the feeling a fair number of them know exactly what is going on with these party bosses.
There's a final note, as someone who was once in a third party, I have some thoughts on why they don't work, and things we ought to watch out for, so that we don't also do them:
1. There's an excessive amount of infighting which brings everyone down.
2. They are very visible as opposition, and make an easy target.
3. A third party needs far more votes. A primary candidate these days as I said needs 10 million, because after the primary, almost all of the partisan voters will simply fall in line. By contrast, a third party candidate needs at least 40 million to win.
4. They have no extant resources to draw from.
There are a lot of groups who typically back the democrats and republicans but haven't lately because the parties have ignored them, or screwed them in the interests of making a quick buck. Even so, these groups are more likely to go with someone in their party of choice who will actually deliver than to go with a third party.
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