The Brew City Brawler is up in Patrick McIlheran's face for supposedly suggesting that Hitler was a "liberal," He burns down that straw man but can't quite avoid the temptation to say that, no, Hitler was sort of like an American conservative.
Patrick did not say that Hitler was a liberal. He suggested, in one sentence, that Hitler cannot really classified as being "on the right" as we use that term in the US in 2007, cited to a recent work that suggests Hitler bought the loyalty of Germans with an elaborate welfare state based upon plunder of the property of Jews and of occupied territories.
On that score, I think he is right. Hitler was not exactly a limited government type of guy and no advocate of property or free markets. As for our contemporary religious right, he hated Christianity as well as Judaism, although the Nazis certainly attempted to co-opt Christianity for their own ends and too many Christians were happy to be co-opted.
Of course, this doesn't mean that he was anything like an American liberal and Patrick made no such claim.
Patrick's point was that some people us the term "right" to refer to anything they don't like.
Other folks do the same thing with the term "left." I don't have the link but it seems to me that during the local Coexist wars, someone posted about Islam being a religion of the left and Christianity a religion of the right. That is just ignorant nonsense. Chritianity identifies values and makes claims about the nature of human beings that are full of implications for politics - they provide the raw material with which we work - but just as there is no male or female, Jew or Greek in Christ (Gal. 3:28), neither is there Democrat or Republican.
2 comments:
I saw snippets of the post you address.
I have had these conversations before too. I often use the term leftist and left in lieu of liberal, because many who have co-opted liberal are anything but liberal, anyone who thinks Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro are great people are not liberal but illiberal.
I think it all centers on Stalin and Soviet Russia. The left and many Democrats fell for the illusion the USSR put out and consequently the left has come to be identified with communism (and communism has come to be identified with the left) and its horrors. So, in an attempt to even the score the left attempts to equate conservatism with Nazism.
In truth neither system (communism or national socialism) has much in common with liberal thought from the right or the left.
Hitler did not allow free-market capitalism. Hitler spent any monies he saw fit, for any purposes he saw fit. Liberals like to believe that Hitler and Mousolini were "right wingers". What they mean is that THEY view anyone who is not LIBERAL, as a TOTALITARIAN WHO WANTS TO ENFORCE CONSERVATIVE VALUES BY GOVERMENT FIAT.
Liberals believe that THEY are GOOD, and that THEIR AIMS are GOOD.
Liberals believe that because THEY ARE and THEIR GOALS ARE....good/pure, that THEY have a MORAL MANDATE to act.
They have decided that their goals are GOOD. THEY HAVE decided that anyone who disagrees is a RED NECK or FASCIST, and thereby not allowed to disagree. The MSM basically follows the aforementioned template. It becomes FACT and is DISEMINATED in Schools, the Media, and is accepted as FACT, by the liberal power structure. Most/nearly ALL of those who rely on GOVERNMENT for their paycheck, AGREE.
How surprising.
Recently, I had a gubmint employee tell me that her employemnt and benefits were justified, because, WE ALL MAKE CHOICES.
What liberals fail to consider is that, IF WE ALL MADE LIBERAL CHOICES, no one would be left to pay the bills and the MASSIVE government hand-outs, that liberals approve of.
In other words, liberals, and socialists, approve of spending, funding and paying for programs, that THEY DON'T PAY FOR.
Post a Comment