Comments on: The Sermon to the Germans

By: zenpundit

zenpundit — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 05:02:27 +0000

Some dude calling himself “Bunny” wrote:

“I just find it amusing that such an educated group of people hold Milton the horrible Friedman in such high regard. You won’t find me praising Mao or joining the Ho Chi Minh fan club.”

I was not aware that in his long life and distinguished career that Dr. Friedman ever managed to establish himself as the ruler of a totalitarian state. Furthermore the number of Western apologists for various leftist tyrants from Lenin forward have not exactly been small. Some still laud Castro and now Hugo Chavez, himself a former putschist ( had the Venezuelan democrats had the nerve to shoot Col. Chavez for treason after his failed coup, they’d have spared themselves much trouble).

Pinochet was a thug but a smarter one than the dilettante Marxist and KGB-backed thug Salvador Allende whom he and the Chilean army overthrew ( and probably had murdered). Pinochet is remarkable only in two respects as a dictator: first, he was a successful counterrevolutionary who eventually gave up power to a democratic system. Secondly, Pinochet listened to good economic advice instead of nationalizing everything in sight, as was the spirit of his times.

A bad man, certainly, who indifferently killed numerous innocent people along with the hard-eyed Allende supporters who were working to make Chile into a Soviet satellite and were playing for power. A figure comparable to most 20th century dictators ? Not by any rational yardstick that doesn’t also involve shilling for socialism.

By: Bunny Colvin

Bunny Colvin — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 20:43:21 +0000

I’ve never said that people were not terrorized under other systems. I just find it amusing that such an educated group of people hold Milton the horrible Friedman in such high regard. You won’t find me praising Mao or joining the Ho Chi Minh fan club.

By: virgil xenophon

virgil xenophon — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 19:52:17 +0000

So——since Bunny is talking about the “almighty” do I take it that she would rather worship at the alter of the almighty Ruble–and the entire social construct that goes with it? As long as you are suggesting that people are terrorized under a capitalist system, would you care to point out any non-capitalist based economy where LESS people have been terrorized since, oh, since of the invention of market capitalism? Or, Bunny, do you believe we would all be in a far better world if we reverted to a non-capitalist, barter economy? Or, alternatively, is it that you believe that other, non-dollar based capitalist social systems are somehow more pure than dollar based ones? How about mixed economies,i.e., present day China? I’m confused. Please explain.

By: Bunny Colvin

Bunny Colvin — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 22:15:15 +0000

Actually Helen, misogyny has nothing to do with it. Had your name been Harry rather than Helen, I would have said “Harry has his whities all in a bunch”. Or “Harry has his boxers all in a bunch”. Nothing sexist about it, honey.

Such thin skin for someone who advocates violence and torture and whose hero Uncle Milty turned a blind eye from such horrors. If you want the chit-chat with me please save your crocodile tears for the murdered masses of South and Central America. And all others terrorized in the name of the almighty Dollar.

By: Helen

Helen — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:59:25 +0000

Well, well, a misogynist as well, eh Bunny? Can’t talk to a woman without going into very nasty personal insults. Pinochet was not a nice man but curiously enough Chile did not disintegrate into an economic mess under him and he also handed power over to a democratically elected civilian government. Can you really say that about any socialist leader? And if you do care so much about people being tortured then you might like to think of the ones in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea etc etc. There political oppression went hand in hand with economic disaster.

By: Danny L. McDaniel

Danny L. McDaniel — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:52:49 +0000

Obama’s speech underlines the problem with many American politicans and that is they speak as if they were part or memory an historical event before their time. With Senator Obama, who was born in 1964, he discovered America 16 years after the berlin Airlift and now must approach it as history and not from memory.

I believe Obama biggest problem will be convincing the largest generation in American – the Baby Boomers, the generation of perpetual youth – that he is their candidate. The Baby Boomers will for the first time, if Obama should be elected, will collectively be older than the President. Baby boomers don’t like to think of themselves as old and McCain could be the fit to keep themselves from feeling too old.

Danny L. McDaniel
Lafayette, Indiana

By: Dylan Bruns

Dylan Bruns — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:12:07 +0000

Um, Pinochet was not evil because of his economic policies. He was evil for political oppression, and if anyone is saying that it would have been OK if he was a communist, then they are at least twisted, and at most evil. The most you can say is that the US supported people who were as bad as the communists.

By: Bunny Colvin

Bunny Colvin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:28:59 +0000

David,

The rabbit in your back yard has enlisted my help in avoiding a torturous death in your house of horrors. It spotted your Pinochet posters and waterboarding table through your back window and it’s now terrified. Please show some compassion toward this poor creature, it has assured me it believes in privatization.

PEACE

By: david foster

david foster — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:18:35 +0000

Bunny, the rabbit who lives in my backyard requests that, if you’re going to use the brand name of her species, you should study rhetoric, so as to be able to better present your ideas in a way that will help maintain the reputation of the brand.

By: Bunny Colvin

Bunny Colvin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:07:55 +0000

Oh good, another revisionist historian. I guess the “personal abuse” has Helen’s panties all in a bunch. The physical abuse handed out by Chicago Girls disciple Augusto Pinochet Ugarte likely didn’t bother her though. It was all in the interest of “free markets”. And they take precedence over human life and dignity.

$$$ and mayhem over peace and stability, right Helen Keller? Open up your eyes, you’re blind to the ways of the world.

PEACE

By: Helen

Helen — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:52:27 +0000

Interesting, the personal abuse and rather strange unfunny puns one gets from people of a certain political persuasion instead of argument. However, anyone who has actually looked at certain parts of the world would have noticed that it is actually socialist ideas that have proved to be a complete failure when put into practice.

By: Bunny Colvin

Bunny Colvin — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 05:13:33 +0000

So, David Foster and the Chicago Swine’s message is be afraid of an Obama presidency? So scary. Almost as scary as four more years of (r)epuke leadership.

Should we all be as scared as the people of South America whom your idols terrorized not long ago? The Chicago Boys ideas proved failures when put into action, as your current Obama smear campaign will in all likelihood.

Keep wasting those fine educations, boys.

By: Helen

Helen — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 01:12:04 +0000

Slightly off topic but quite a lot of those people were not Germans. What with the rock bands and the hullaballoo around Obama, various touriss and visitors flooded there. Maybe not important but worth noting. They were also mostly rather young by the sound of it and not very interested in history. Obama, as we know, is a little weak on his history anyway so there was synergy between the two.

By: Ginny

Ginny — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:55:41 +0000

Indeed, David gives us a clue in his post:
A sustained U.S. presence in Europe was by no means unaminously popular at the time–indeed, the Progressive Party candidate of 1948, Henry Wallace, opposed both the Airlift and the Marshall Plan–see also here. (Wallace’s slogan, “one world,” sounds a lot like something Obama would say.)
Henry Wallace had been FDR’s vice president but had become the Progressive Party’s candidate in 1948. We might see a similarity with Lieberman, who was Gore’s running mate but has since become an independent. The Democrats in the late forties marginalized fellow travelers; the Democrats in the 2000s marginalize those who would embrace such actions as the Berlin airlift.

By: Shannon Love

Shannon Love — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:23:43 +0000

Fred Lapides,

There is a sharp discontinuity between the democratic party pre and post 1968. Pre-1968, the democrats where the socially conservative party of the middle-class. Post 1960, they represented inherited wealth, and pseudo-intellectual urban elites. More importantly, they stopped being the party of the everyman and started aping the elitist based politics of continental Europe.

It is the hated and reviled Reagan and Bush who stand in the shoes of Truman and JFK when it comes to foreign policy. People in Obama’s intellectual tradition opposed the U.S. fighting the Cold War and offering any resistance to the Soviets at all.

The Democrats are not what they used to be.

By: Dan from Madison

Dan from Madison — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:18:27 +0000

MAN Fred hits the sauce early in the day, I am a bit jealous.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:37:14 +0000

Hi, Fred. You can’t assume that because there is something called “the Democratic Party” in 2008, which has organizational continuity with something called “the Democratic Party” in 1948, that these entities stand for the same things.

Analogy: Suppose Apple Computer were taken over by people from the nether regions of the consumer electronics industry, and refocused itself on very-high-volume commodity products. It would still have the same name, and have legal continuity with the Apple we know and love–might even have many of the same employees–but would not be the same company in terms of values and strategy.

Another analogy: Many people in the 1930s were familiar with a “Germany” that they rightly remembered as an advanced and civilized nation, and assumed–quite wrongly, as it turned out–that this entity could be counted on to maintain certain minimum standards of behavior.

Do you honestly believe that Harry Truman would have had high regard for the foreign policy ideas of Obama, Pelosi, Reid, et al?

By: fred lapides

fred lapides — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:16:35 +0000

golly…and just think: 200,000 Germans did not know this and if they read this they soon will. You might also note that Truman was of the Devil’s party–a Democrat, as was FDR, the party that you maintain doesn’t understand foreign policy or war.