What are Those Incompetent Wimps Going to Do Anyway?

18 thoughts on “What are Those Incompetent Wimps Going to Do Anyway?”

1. “In their fantasy, the American Left is a large and effective force of people perfectly willing to fight but held back only by their devotion to no violent change.”

   As pointed out by Dr. R. J. Rummel (no relation), the most murderous regimes in the 20th Century were all Leftist. The Communists are the grand champions, of course, but the National Socialists gave them a run for their money in the brief time they had.

   The very basis for Liberal ideology is that they lack the courage of their convictions. They have all these grand schemes, social engineering writ large, but they aren’t willing to take the first steps themselves. That is why they are determined, even desperate, to grab the reins of political power. If they could only get the government to force everyone to do what they say, to sweep away the opposition with a tide of Brownshirts, then there would be Utopia!

   So I agree that Liberals are physical cowards, but caution you to not be so quick to dismiss them out of hand. They have proven to be extremely dangerous, as long as they can outsource the work.

2. “If they could only get the government to force everyone to do what they say, to sweep away the opposition with a tide of Brownshirts, then there would be Utopia!”

   Important to note that there were Brownshirts in Germany long before the Nazis obtained control of the government. Indeed, without Brownshirt intimidation, I doubt if the Nazis would have achieved the success that they did in the political process.

   Goebbels probably would not have been very effective in a street brawl, but he had friends who were very good at it. In our situation, the reports of police complicity in illegal union activities in Wisconsin should raise very serious concerns if they are true.

3. Their are elements on the left that perpetrate “terrorist-lite” events—particularly the “wacko” environmentalists out west who like to vandalize car lots and SUVs. That said, these folks probably won’t use a traditional form of in-your-face violence, but if they did, they would probably arrange a scenario where they would be victimized (martyred) as a result. That may sound loopy, but the leftists seem to love the Islamic jihadi model—for they are loathe to criticize them or hold them accountable for their atrocities.

   There is a great DVD called In The Face of Evil—-it is mainly about the Reagan legacy, but the sub-theme is the “beast” of Marxism. Today’s American leftist is essentially a Marxist, and the average jihadi isn’t —but has a similar antipathy for the West and western values and traditions—-so it does not come as a surprise when the same folks who wanted to appease the Soviets want to soft-peddle the war on terror and Islamo fanaticism. Let us hope the day never comes when they start trading favors in pursuit of a common goal.

4. There were Brownshirts, but there were also large numbers of Communists in the street as well. I think that fact was important when the populace decided marginally to side with the Nazis to get some sort of order restored to their country. There was something to react against. Not a good choice in the end.

   The lefties like Leiter ought to remember that here that the essential difference is that bubba owns a gun (thanks 2nd Amend.) unlike libs and doesn’t care much for the gummint.

5. It’s also important to remember that the brownshirts where successful only because they we seen as responding to the violence initiated by the communist redshirts. The Nazi were a minor party until the spring of 1931 when they gained a reputation for protecting, poor people, shop keeper and even the police from violent attacks from communist gangs.

   Most Germans felt they were caught between the National Socialist and the Stalinist. Since the communist were a known evil they decided to take a gamble on a coalition headed by the Nazis who were at least German. The Nazis only got 28% of the vote. Had it not been for violence of the redshirts and the threat poised by the Stalin, the Nazis would have remained an obscure party.

6. If a schizophrenic pothead like Jared Loughner can kill six people and would several more, a philosophy professor could probably kill one or two. It takes very little brains to murder somebody.

   It also takes very few left-wing chemistry professors to get your bomb-making ramped up. Hell, anybody can download the Anarchist’s Cookbook. For that matter, anybody can buy a pound of black powder at Walmart, or a pound of Clays Universal at Cabela’s.

   Most violent domestic terrorism these days is the left-wing environmentalist fringe: ELF, etc. They do mail bombs, they do arson, they spike trees. These people specialize in “brazen viciousness”, they always have, and they have an ample supply of thoroughly-indoctrinated, narcissistic young men hyped up on testosterone and self-righteousness.

   Are they actually going to start killing people? I doubt it. They’re drama queens. This Leiter cretin thinks that if we cut higher-education funding back to Clinton-era levels, that’s the same thing as defunding it entirely and burning books in the streets. He’s a sniveling, panicky little girl. He’s just throwing a tantrum.

   What we’re likely to see more of is street violence, fists and lead pipes, from the union crowd and the undergraduates. But I wouldn’t bet on real terrorism, because these fuckheads are incredibly comfortable, and nothing is going to change that. Their funding is lavish. It will be microscopically less lavish for a while. If it were drastically less lavish, they could fire all the parasitic administrators and assistant football coaches they’ve hired in the last 20 years and do a better job teaching kids, but you can’t expect mentally-retarded innumerate blockheads with tenure to figure that out.

7. s/would/wound/ duh

8. We were clearing out our dvd & stopped to listen to Frank Dikkoter. This is but one instance of the great 20th century truth – more are killed by democide than war – in this case, he argued that 45 million died between 1958-62. I’d taught Emerson today; some days I get exasperated with his “follow your whim” vision, but I was struck tonight. A country that still reads Emerson and feels buoyed by him, a county that believes in the right to bear arms – well, I don’t think 45 million would die because of brutally enforced crackpot schemes that don’t work. We saw one in Obamacare and within weeks tea parties were motivated. That some would like this nation to be docile may be true – but it isn’t going to happen. The Democrats & unions in Wisconsin clearly have lost all sense of what the rule of law has given us – they seem to want one election, one man (2008, of course; not 2010 & Walker). The lack of imagination of where this kind of thing can go seems lost on them. I’m torn between hoping that Wisconsin, etc. are wake-up calls and we will be brought to see how precious our rights are and my sense that this isn’t going to end well for any of us and we are reaping what we’ve sown in the last forty years when we knew the public schools were becoming cesspools and that policy after policy that ignored any checks against self interest were put in place.

9. There have been quite a few acts of violence attributed to the “animal rights” crowd..especially in Britain but also in the US. These have sometimes attacked second- and third-order connections: ie, not just a company’s researchers and executives, but also the company’s bankers and the nannies of it’s employees. I’ve read about biotech companies whose ability to raise capital has been seriously impacted by this stuff.

   The professors and media types who inspire this activity are usually not going to participate in it directly. They don’t have to.

   I don’t think the most likely scenario is a protracted stand-up fight, but rather terrorist incidents that will intimidate many people from writing or saying anything that offends the extreme Left, just as we’ve already seen in the case of radical Islamists.

10. so, I read Shannon, blurt out a response, go to Instapundit for nightly and he links to a link to NYTimes, where we see Obama wishing that he could be Mao. And the Times article treats his fecklessness with respect and separates his impressive role as the first Black president as dividing him from his less idealistic role as President. I caan’t believe these people. Did anyone notice that Obama’s reaction to the Japanese tragedy was to seem rather surprised that others suffer – despite our differences. How I long for a president who understood that within each of us – on every continent – is a spark of the divine and that we are all one in all the important ways: who knew that at gut level and therefore his expressions came from that center.

11. Retardo touched on the use of bombs, but not in enough detail. I will note that anyone who uses the Anarchist Cookbook is going to have an appointment with Darwin.

    Look at the nature of violence from the modern Left [J. Scott Shipman is right about them being functionally Marxist, and that includes Democrats], and the lessons that they are learning from their Jihadi “friends” [as in ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’]; we WILL have violence, but it will not be a stand up fight. First, there will be bombs. They threaten with them often enough, including in the series of death threats sent to the Republican Senate Caucus in Wisconsin. They can, if done properly, be used to attack with limited risk of detection and possibly painful confrontation. Once fabricated, they can be positioned by expendable dupes. And the concept of terrorism and extortion is dear to the heart of the Left and unions. It is in their ideological blood. Even the recent letter to businesses from the police and firefighters unions in Wisconsin demanding that they sign up to oppose Governor Walker, or face both a boycott and an implied refusal of protection by the police and fire departments contains that veiled threat. [“Nice business you have here. Pity if something should happen to it.”]. The redeeming feature is that bombmaking is a skill that demands discipline, attention to detail, and atrong reality testing. These are in short supply on the Left. Those who do not have them, will go boom. And the limited numbers of effective bombmakers can be identified and traced, q.v. Iraqi terrorists. But the ability to kill innocent women and children at a distance will make Leftists consider themselves Heros of the Revolution.

    The other aspect of violence will be pack violence. Remember Kenneth Gladney, the black man who was handing out “Don’t Tread On Me” flags at the Russ Carnahan Town Hall TEA Party in Missouri? Right after the White House directed unions to “Punch back twice as hard” and “Get in their faces”; several large SEIU members in their purple union shirts mobbed him, called him the ‘N’ word, and beat him severely enough to cause a concussion. They were videoed and ID’ed. One was a former Democrat candidate for mayor of St.Louis. Somehow, the Democrat District Attorney could not bring himself to prosecute. This is akin to the German Redshirts that Shannon Love references. And if Law Enforcement is compromised by siding with the Left, like in Wisconsin and Missouri; then there is only one other response that is going to happen. And that response is not going to be surrender by Conservatives.

    What are those incompetent wimps going to do? They are going to attack from behind and depend on the protection of corrupt local law enforcement and politically allied Federal law enforcement. Next question.

    Subotai Bahadur

12. “not been widely addressed in political philosophy since Locke.”

    What is this guy a professor of: basket weaving? Has his reading ceased with the 18th century? Is “widely addressed” a synonym for “what he likes to read.” I’ve read Kropotkin, Bakunin, Lenin, and Mao: the theory of political violence and its practical implementation has beed widely discussed and put into practice. Only a professor could be this stupid.

13. The Left is capable of great violence because they are true believers. They believe they are fighting against evil to advance a noble cause. The right often sees the Left as misguided and tries to reason with them, but the Left believes they have virtue on their side. They see their opposition as pure evil that must be eradicated. It that requires extreme measures it’s justified by necessity, in their minds.

    Adam Smith said, “Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience.”

    One wishes the Right could get a little bit of the moral fervor in its thinking. For example, Gov. Scott Walker explained what he was doing as fiscally necessary. He could have also argued that it is immoral for the teachers’ union and its bought and paid for politicians to collude under the guise of collective bargaining to fleece taxpayers.

    When Margaret Thatcher took on the coal miners union she stressed that is was a moral issue as well as a financially necessary one. The right could emphasize the moral aspect without going to the excesses of the Left, and it would be to its great advantage to do so. I think Ronald Reagan was able to do that to some extent.

14. They do tend to forget which side has the guns.

15. Well, most Tea Party-ists are women. So, probably he would be slugging a girl. He would successfully beat her up, and then have to live with himself. This might not bother him, but it would bother me.

16. The Alaska Peacemakers Militia, a so called Patriot group who were plotting to kill State troopers and the neo-Nazi attempted bombing of a Martin Luther King Day parade were both acts that came from what would be labeled the right.

    My view is that left-right models or labels are not useful in extremist cases, as they are true believers and outside the range that these terms are useful.

17. Rough Cut,

    The Alaska Peacemakers Militia, a so called Patriot group who were plotting to kill State troopers and the neo-Nazi attempted bombing of a Martin Luther King Day parade were both acts that came from what would be labeled the right.

    Neo-Nazis, like the originals are something of a fusion between left and right. In most groups you will find them agreeing with the contemporary Left more than the contemporary Right. They are extremely anti-freemarket and anti-big business. They are protectionist and usually pro-union. They oppose the Liberation of Iraq and believe Israel to be the major cause of conflict in the region. Usually the only thing they actually agree with the Right is gun rights.

    The only thing that really makes them non-Leftist at all is their racist attitudes and one can make the argument that while Leftists movements and regimes are usually rhetorically anti-racist, in practice they seldom are.

    Leftists just define as Right any movement or ideology in which articulate intellectuals are not the pivotal players. So, anyone from Stalin to anachro-captialist can get labeled as Right. Basically, some movement is “rightwing” if they do one or more things that Leftists don’t like even if they agree with Leftists over the vast majority of issues.

    My view is that left-right models or labels are not useful in extremist cases, as they are true believers and outside the range that these terms are useful.

    It depends on the scale you are talking about. People who act as individuals or in groups of a couple or dozen or usually have an ideology that is a hodgepodge of various mainstream ideologies. Usually the only constant theme is that the extremist is the victim of an unjust world and gets to lash out at anyone and everyone as a consequence.

    Once you begin to talk about groups of hundreds or more then you see convergence to the Left-Right model. In the 20th century, most political violence in America has been done by individuals easily classified as Leftists e.g. unionist, anti-war rioters, “anarchist” etc.

    More to the point, we are increasingly seeing mainstream Leftists like Professor Levit beginning to muse that if they can’t win at the ballot box (because of whatever unfair advantage they think the right has) then they are justified in using violence to reach their absolutely correct and utterly morally justified political goals. In one sense that is troubling but on the other hand, Leftists are so effete these days, I can’t really take them as to serious a threat in the grand scheme of things.

18. There is some merit in what you wrote. However, do not overlook the fact that the Democrat Party has already given us one Civil War. They started it because they believed that the election of a Republican to the presidency would lead to the end of slavery and their way of life.

    The parallels to today are disturbing.

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