(no subject)

[fpb]

Anyone who thinks that I was too harsh about Jonah Goldberg's repulsive and politically motivated rewriting of my own country's history ought to read today's Thomas Sowell column, where it is taken entirely at its own valuation and highly recommended as summer reading for the children of conservatives. This unhistorical, culturally imperialistic propaganda, that distorts my country's and my continent's history in the service of provincial American concerns, is going to enter the bloodstream of a whole American party, If it has not already done so. This will increase further the mutual incomprehension between USA and Europe, because you cannot stand on your two hind legs and inform anyone who knows anything of continental history - France, Italy, Germany, etc. - that Nazism and Fascism were "left wing". This sort of rubbish, especially if spoken with the arrogance of Goldberg and Sowell, will increase European contempt for American viewpoints and culture. Do we really need this sort of trash further complicating our already difficult relationship, and all for the sake of a few Republican votes in the next election?

Comments

Re: The Left and Socialism

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

" In fact, as I argued in my series on American politics, the distinction between left and right applies poorly to American politics even now, altough it is becoming more relevant; and not at all in the past. The issue of the place of traditional sources of authority was not until recent times anything like an issue in the USA. The distinction was rather between populist and legalist politics, which was long efficiently incarnated by the Democrat and Republican groupings."

Since we are substantially agreed on this point (which I also made in an earlier discussion) I extend to you the olive branch.

My objection to calling the American Right (small-government, free trade, individualism) by the same rubric as the European Right (absolute government, economic autarchy, free trade) is that it is misleading, or, as you say, "apply poorly."

The American Right (so-called) is revolutionary when it comes to laws and customs alien to its Enlightenment ideals, seeking radical and immediate change. It is conservative when it comes to laws and customs, and religion, it sees as confirming or upholding those ideals, and in such circumstances seeks to conserve them. As such, it fits nowhere easily on the political spectrum you describe. There is no entrenched clergy or entrenched aristocracy in America, and even the wealthy do not maintain themselves across generations as a coherent class with a uniformity of interests. As you say in your essay, that may be changing, but it was not that way hitherto.

Can we at least agree on this point?

Re: The Left and Socialism

[fpb.livejournal.com]

No. I simply do not accept your instinctive refusal to admit that there can be such a thing as right-wing tyranny and right-wing totalitarianism. There is a subtext to everything you say, which is that, right=freedom, left=unfreedom. That is simply something you have to get over, because you will find nobody outside a part of the American Republican and Libertarian parties who will agree with you. It would make more sense to say, extremes on both sides = unfreedom, moderates on both sides = freedom.

Besides, what I said is that there really never was any such thing as a straight left-right polarity in American politics at all, until the sixties and the rise of the New Left, which took an oppositional position to the whole American system, although for its own political purposes it prefered to infiltrate the established Democratic Party. Until then, there was a basic consensus on the American system, laws, principles and religion. For that matter, it is my view that the current muddle and misdirection of the Republican Party comes in great part from a lack of understanding of the position that the rise of a destructive rather than loyal opposition among the Democrats creates.