Another bad experience

[fpb]

Why in God's name did I ever place my essay on JKR's religion on FA? Most of the responses I received have been appalling: those who did not insist that Christianity meant anything they wanted it to mean simply imagined that I was criticizing JKR for not holding it, on the supposition - which I explicitly denied dozens of times - that you cannot be a decent person without being Christian. God Almighty, the whole damned essay begins with me denying that Christian is a term of moral approval! Do these idiots even know how to read, or do they just play with letters like babies or monkeys?

Comments

Re: Here we go again Part II

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

Now, to add madness to inaccuracy, the Socialist consensus somehow, when it regarded America, a nation with no history of an established church or aristocratic hierarchy, to be aligned with the Sons of Darkness, the forces of reaction, the enemies of progress. The most revolutionary nation in history, and the only nation whose revolution actually achieved the goals it set out to achieve, now the Socialists dismissed as illiberal.

To add dishonesty to madness, when the national socialist movements started in Italy and Germany, the Communist, maddened with hatred over these violent anti-Communist populist collective movement, announced that they were "Far Right", which, taken literally, would mean violent supporters of aristocratic and clerical privilege. The Socialist throw the free market into the same category, making an illogical mix of revolutionary and reactionary factions, liberal and totalitarian, and calling all of them by the same name "Right", meanwhile using the term "Left", which originally meant individualistic and liberal, now to mean a mild or a violent form of totalitarian collectivism.

Now, the myth of the war of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness required that the defender of evil Capitalism be violent and cruel. And so when violent and cruel national socialists and fascists appeared on the history scene, these were dragooned into service as the boogiemen of Socialist mythology: they, the arch-foes of the free market and deadly enemies of human freedom, were portrayed as the violent defenders of "Capitalism." America, the only superpower in history never to have imperial designs, was also dragooned, after the war, into this role as an Imperialist aggressor. The comical stupidity of the terminology had, at this point, was beyond satire. It was merely Newspeak, using terms to mean their opposites, and doublethink, rank hypocrisy.

To make matters even more confusing, the conservatives both in American (classical liberals) and in Europe (monarchists) as well as the new faction that fits in neither category (nationalists) all adopted their enemy's terminology, and called themselves "Right".

So you tell me. Has there ever been a tyranny based on limited government, free trade, the rights of man, checks and balances, freedom of speech and the press, and freedom of conscience.

Whatever you want to call that idea -- the technically correct word is 'liberal' -- sounds to me like an idea that cannot be married to the idea of tyranny in any form.

You can call the idea of limited government and the Rights of Men leftwing, rightwing, or chickenwing for all I care. It is the portrayal of these classical liberal and Enlightenment ideas as merely a mild or nonviolent form of Nazism I object to -- and this is a point where I thought, at least, you and I agreed. Republicanism or classical liberalism or whatever you want to call it is not related to fascism.

In fact, they are opposites. The only way to make them look related is to adopt this deliberately misleading Right-Left shibboleth that all and sundry seem to accept as normal.

Well, I for one cannot accept it as normal: it is nonsensical. It is like talking to some bizarre Protestant who insists that Atheism is an extreme form of Catholicism, and that Catholicism is a mild form of Atheism.