Cynical Nation

Count me as a conservative, quasi-libertarian, anti-populist, liberal-hating, pro-US, moderately supportive of Israel, anti-war-but-now-that-we-are-there-we-have-to-get-it-right, free-trade-free-market-semi-isolationist, Michael-Weiner-despising, Dubya-loving (although not in the same way I love Carrie Underwood), the-Constitution-is-not-a-suicide-pact, freedom-loving, enviromental-capitalist, who can't remember anything that happened between the spring of 1967 and being turned away from Woodstock by the state police even though I had a ticket and had hitch-hiked all the way from Hartford CT -- and then things get fuzzy again until the 1972 presidential campaign, after which I have more-or-less continuous recollection of events.

But I wouldn't really call myself "anti-Zionist."

I can think of many conservatives who were against the Iraq War and I can't think of anything less traditionally conservative than intervening in Iraq as I sincerely believe that Reagan wouldn't have put Americans in a similar defensive position on such a wide scale.

I think, however, the question of whether the Iraq War is "conservative" was addressed by Representative Duncan (R-Tenn) in February of 2003. Is he anti-semetic? Frankly, I don't know, but I don't think that Brent Scowcroft or Ron Paul are. My dad also considers himself a conservative and I know he is a supporter of Israel and is not anti-semetic.

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Note: This is a transcript of the speech delivered on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on February 26, 2003 by U.S. Congressman John Duncan, Jr. (R-TX). The hyperlinks included below were added by the webmaster, not by anyone affiliated with the Congressman Duncan.

This is a transcript of the speech delivered on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on February 26, 2003 by U.S. Congressman John Duncan, Jr. (R-TENN).

The SPEAKER pro tempore: Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. DUNCAN: Mr. Speaker, I would insert at this point my full statement in the RECORD.

Mr. Speaker, most people do not realize how many conservatives are against going to war in Iraq.

A strong majority of nationally-syndicated conservative columnists have come out against this war. Just three of many examples I could give include the following:

Charley Reese, a staunch conservative, who was selected a couple of years ago as the favorite columnist of C-Span viewers, wrote that a U.S. attack on Iraq: ``is a prescription for the decline and fall of the American empire. Overextension--urged on by a bunch of rabid intellectuals who wouldn't know one end of a gun from another--has doomed many an empire. Just let the United States try to occupy the Middle East, which will be the practical result of a war against Iraq, and Americans will be bled dry by the costs in both blood and treasure.''

Paul Craig Roberts, who was one of the highest-ranking Treasury Department officials under President Reagan and now a nationally-syndicated conservative columnist, wrote: ``an invasion of Iraq is likely the most thoughtless action in modern history.''

James Webb, a hero in Vietnam and President Reagan's Secretary of the Navy, wrote: ``The issue before us is not whether the United States should end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared to occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years.''

It is a traditional conservative position to be against huge deficit spending.

http://members.aol.com/apollo711/war/duncan.html

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This was followed by a speech called "Nothing Conservative about War in Iraq" given on June 15, 2004.

http://www.house.gov/duncan/2004/fs061504.htm

WF, very interesting bio!

PE, I'll absolutely agree with you that there is nothing conservative about the war in Iraq by any conventional definition of the term. What can I say, we live in interesting times.

Obviously I didn't know how to spell anti-Semitic. My mistake.

BTW, I'd lump Ron Paul in with the libertarians (ditto Bob Barr), and Brent Scowcroft... well, I'm not even sure I'd call him a conservative. In any case, the libertarians are their own ball of wax. I honestly don't know whether Ron Paul is anti-Semitic or not. Some anti-war libertarians certainly are (e.g., Justin Raimondo) while many others are not.

BTW, I do know (in my personal life, anyway) quite a few anti-war conservatives who are not anti-Israel in any way. I'm sure there are some on the national stage as well, but I can't help but observe an overlap there that, while not total, is noticeable, IMO.

Barry,
Your analysis is partially correct. I agree that Buchanan is, in a way, antisemitic. On the other hand Chuck Hagel is sort of an "anti-war" conservative that is pro-Israel. I dont think you can generalize.

Regarding liberals, you also appear to be wrong. For instance, I am very liberal and very anti-war, but I am very pro-Israel. And I dont live in New York (although Chicago has a large jewish population as well). Anyway, I think there is also some hidden antisemitism among many conservatives that are pro-war supporters and some parts of the republican party.

I have no trouble reconciling my pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian sentiments concurrently. My desire to see a good outcome for the Palestinian people is not rooted in anti-zionism, and certainly doesn't require the extinction of Israel.

BTW, I don't believe the battle for the conservative soul is between "neocons" and "paleocons" or even originalists and libertarians. I think it's between (small "r") republicans and populists, who sometimes appear to be "conservative."

We need to define terms here.

I KNOW that you can be against the existence of the state of Israel and NOT be anti-Semitic.

They are NOT one in the same thing. Hell, there are anti-Zionist Jews.

I think the reckless throwing around of terms like "racist" and “anti-Semite" tend to render those terms near meaningless. You can dislike most black people you meet and not be a "racist," just as you can be black and dislike and distrust most whites you meet without being the same. You may have actually just come in contact with a number of unsavory people from those respective groups, or you may just have a disagreeable temperament.

All such terms have been grossly over-used today...at least in my opinion.

Often people are branded one of these things for taking stances that are entirely principled. Pat Buchanan, for instance, defended John Demunjiak, in so far as asserting that Demunjiak was NOT "Ivan the Terrible."

He was RIGHT and all those who wrongly accused that guy of being "Ivan the Terrible" were, well, wrong. Even Israel's top court acceded that.

Buchanan has also opposed U.S. foreign aid and intervention all over the world and makes no exception in Israel's case. In so much as that is a consistent and universal position of his and treats Israel no different than it does, say Burma, that position is NOT innately anti-Semitic either.

His position questioning whether the Germans could've actually killed as many Jews as is claimed they did, was certainly controversial, maybe even callous and insensitive, but since the number of people killed in the Holocaust is largely based on estimates, as most of the actual records were either not well kept, or destroyed, the actual number can be debated without ethnic bigotry being an underlying motivation.

That said, I don't understand what purpose people think quibbling with the actual numbers would serve. To me, it doesn't matter whether Hitler's regime murdered 12 million (six million Jews & six million others) as is commonly held today, or eighteen million or three million - the intent was clear, the monstrosity is obvious.

Hitler was a murderous, tyrannical Socialist, just like Joe Stalin and Mao were. In fact, the shear numbers show that both Mao (80 million or more murdered) and Stalin (40 to 60 million murdered) were even far more ruthless and efficient killers than Hitler was, and if anything, that fact, rarely gets its due today.

In fact, for years, many American Liberals swallowed Walter Duranty's (of the NY Times) LIES that Stalin and Mao presided over veritable "worker's paradises" and even when the real facts and the shear numbers killed came out, many defended even that, by saying "Well, Mao & Stalin killed dissidents who opposed the Socialist model. They did what they did for the good of everyone," as if there were some innate or obvious difference between the mass murder that was Hitler's and that of Mao & Stalin.

Yes, Ron Paul (like many Libertarians) too opposes any aid to Israel...or anywhere else and has opposed our "foreign entanglements" in the Mid-East and elsewhere, but that too seems both an entirely consistent and principled stand on his part.

With Buchanan's insensitivity and no love lost for Jews in general, let alone Israel, I can see where some very sensitive people might question whether or not he harbors some real anti-Semitic feelings, the same cannot be said for Ron Paul, who has ONLY stood firm against any & all U.S. Foreign aid and opposed nearly every foreign entanglement and has never made any controversial arguments about Jews in general.

Personally, I hold no favor for any nation other than the U.S., so I see Israel in starkly practical terms. It currently serves a vital U.S. interest as our satellite in that region. It is an oil rich region and even though we get most of our foreign oil elsewhere (Mexico and Venezuela) that region has a profound impact on the world's market price for oil.

That is why it IS right (in my view) for America to support Israel right now, that is why it was right for us to rebuff Iraq in Gulf War I, even after lying to Saddam when he came to the U.S. for help and was told, "We don't get involved in such border disputes," that is why it was right to get involved in the Balkans and attack the initial victims of ethnic genocide (the Christian Serbs) to advance our own interests (the Albanian Oil Pipeline) in that region and that is why it was right to invade Iraq (one the leading state sponsors of international terrorism) to both eradicate that rogue state sponsor of international terrorism and to try and stabilize that region along with the world oil market in the process.

But what if, as they say, once oil reaches $100/barrel the gasification of coal, getting oil from oil shale and oil sands, which the U.S. and Canada have in huge abundance becomes more practical? What if we do wean ourselves off oil and re-tool our economy to run on some alternative non-oil based fuel?

In my view, our interests and ties to Israel would no longer exist.

Does that mean we'd oppose Israel?

Of course not, but Israel would then mean about as much to us, as Americans, as Liberia does, a nation that Americans also had a hand in creating. That is to say, we'd have little, if any interest or allegiance to Israel under such circumstances and that wouldn't be anti-Semitic at all. It would merely be practicality.

I tend to agree with Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan far more than I disagree, but I do disagree with both of them over the practicality of the current U.S. interventionism. It is certainly costly and it is a huge burden in terms of both dollars and blood, but since we are an oil-based economy we MUST maintain the free flow of oil at market prices, at least until such time as that fuel is replaced by some alternative.

I don’t have any personal stake in Israel at all, so for me, I merely disagree with those Libertarians and Conservatives who oppose both our interventions in the Mid-East and current support for Israel, though I can understand and respect their positions. I COULD respect the Left’s anti-war stance as well, merely being against the war is just a policy issue. I CANNOT and DO NOT respect people who call America “the world’s biggest terrorist,” who liken terrorists to America's “Minutemen,” or liken the current American administration to the Third Reich, as that is not taking issue with policy, but engaging in sedition, bordering on treason during wartime.

Yup...That's pretty much the way I see it.

I probably should make this one small addendum regarding, "With Buchanan's insensitivity and no love lost for Jews in general, let alone Israel, I can see where some very sensitive people might question whether or not he harbors some real anti-Semitic feelings..."

The phrase, "very sensitive" sounds as though those feelings are not legitimate, and I'd say that since ALL reality is a matter of perception, ALL perceptions are real, for any given perceiver.

Therefore, I should replace the phrase, "very sensitive," with "of particular sensibilities."

I've always found the quibbling over numbers killed, whether its Hitler's, Stalin's or Mao's attrocities we're talking about, to be unsavory, as it can easily lend itself to some sort of numerical depreciation, or at least the perception thereof.

Is Pol Pot, for instance, any less a mass murderer for killing "only" 3 million?

The intent of ALL these tyrants is the same and it is both pointless and horrific to either diminish the brutality or barabrity of one by comparing them to those of another for the purpose of ameliorating the deeds of any specific mass murderer.

So even though I may disagree with someone who sees Buchanan as an anti-Semite (I do), I can understand certain sensibilities may lead some folks to such a conclusion. That's not the case, in my view, with Ron Paul, or Jacob Hornsberger or the late Murray Rothbard (himself Jewish) who railed against U.S. foreign aid, as "international welfare."

It's not solely a matter of supporting with or opposing the war in Iraq, or the Patriot Act here at home. For instance, I don't despise Cindy Sheehan's opposition to the war in Iraq, any more than I do Pat Buchanan's, which is to say, not at all.

I disagree vehemently with that stance, but there is nothing innately wrong/bad about that.

I DID find her speaking as though she were a spokesman for the families of those killed in Iraq, both arrogant and insensitive, since many, many of those families disagree with her.

I've since found her Michael Moore-ISH statements that "America is the world's biggest terrorist," and "G W Bush is ten times worse than Usamma bin Laden" and comparing contemporary America to the Third Reich to be malevolent and bordering on seditious...and I do believe her recent embracing of Hugo Chavez and bashing America while in Venezuela to be, in fact, treasonous.

There's a HUGE difference between taking a consistent and principled stance (against ALL foreign aid and entanglements) and one that assails a wartime administration for conducting a war and moving to take extra security measures at home to ferret out potential enemy cells within country, as "nazistic," "terroristic" and "evil."

I probably should make this one small addendum

How do you define small? :)

And by the way, you never followed my advise to read more history. Hitler was never a socialist, but you keep writing that wrong statement.

Hitler was indeed a Socialist. The nazis were, as their name implied, "National SOCIALISTS."

Just as Stalin targeted the landowners and small business owners in Russia (dooming the Russian economy), Hitler did the same thing (the Jews were targeted because they were, largely an entreprenurial group), only Hitler allowed businessmen, like the Krupps, to run businesses with a veritable monopoly status granted by government decree.

Stalin later tried to do that by granting American tycoon (owner of Occidental Petroleum) and founder of the CPUSA, Armand Hammer to have a virtual monopoly status in the then USSR.

But there's more, MUCH MORE..."Note that Marx wanted to "emancipate" (free) mankind from Jewry ("Judentum" in Marx's original German), just as Hitler did and that the title of Marx's essay in German was "Zur Judenfrage" -- which is exactly the same expression ("Jewish question") that Hitler used in his famous phrase "Endloesung der Judenfrage" ("Final solution of the Jewish question"). And when Marx speaks of the end of Jewry by saying that Jewish identity must necessarily "dissolve" itself, the word he uses in German is "aufloesen", which is a close relative of Hitler's word "Endloesung" ("final solution"). So all the most condemned features of Nazism can be traced back to Marx and Engels. The thinking of Hitler, Marx and Engels differed mainly in emphasis rather than in content. All three were second-rate German intellectuals of their times. Anybody who doubts that practically all Hitler's ideas were also to be found in Marx & Engels should spend a little time reading the quotations from Marx & Engels."

Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises wrote of the nazis; "The Nazis have not only imitated the Bolshevist tactics of seizing power. They have copied much more. They have imported from Russia the one-party system and the privileged role of this party and its members in public life; the paramount position of the secret police; the organization of affiliated parties abroad which are employed in fighting their domestic governments and in sabotage and espionage, assisted by public funds and the protection of the diplomatic and consular service; the administrative execution and imprisonment of political adversaries; concentration camps; the punishment inflicted on the families of exiles; the methods of propaganda. They have borrowed from the Marxians even such absurdities as the mode of address, party comrade (Parteigenosse), derived from the Marxian comrade (Genosse), and the use of a military terminology for all items of civil and economic life. The question is not in which respects both systems are alike but in which they differ..."

(Ludwig von Mises)

"For those who are unaware of it, Ludwig von Mises was an Austrian Jewish intellectual and a remarkable economist (nobel Prize winner in Economics). He got out of Vienna just hours ahead of the Gestapo. He did therefore have both every reason and every opportunity to be a close observer of Nazism;"

"The Nazis did not, as their foreign admirers contend, enforce price control within a market economy. With them price control was only one device within the frame of an all-around system of central planning. In the Nazi economy there was no question of private initiative and free enterprise. All production activities were directed by the Reichswirtschaftsministerium. No enterprise was free to deviate in the conduct of its operations from the orders issued by the government. Price control was only a device in the complex of innumerable decrees and orders regulating the minutest details of every business activity and precisely fixing every individual's tasks on the one hand and his income and standard of living on the other.

"What made it difficult for many people to grasp the very nature of the Nazi economic system was the fact that the Nazis did not expropriate the entrepreneurs and capitalists openly and that they did not adopt the principle of income equality which the Bolshevists espoused in the first years of Soviet rule and discarded only later. Yet the Nazis removed the bourgeois completely from control. Those entrepreneurs who were neither Jewish nor suspect of liberal and pacifist leanings retained their positions in the economic structure. But they were virtually merely salaried civil servants bound to comply unconditionally with the orders of their superiors, the bureaucrats of the Reich and the Nazi party.

(Ludwig von Mises)

"There is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it. There is, above all, genuine, revolutionary feeling, which is alive everywhere in Russia except where there are Jewish Marxists. I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communists always will."

(Adolph Hitler)

And finally THIS, from Hitler himself; "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions"

(Speech of May 1, 1927.
Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306)

http://jonjayray.netfirms.com/hitler.html

In response to, "I probably should make this one small addendum..." (JMK) "How do you define small?" (BW)

A mere turn of the phrase. I inserted "of certain sensibilities" for "very sensitive"...a slight, but meaningful turn of the phrase, for clarification.

JMK,
Marxism may have been a failed cosmotheory but it was by no means reflecting antisemitism. In fact, essentially all important original marxist leaders in history (with the exception of Stalin) were jewish themselves.

Now, as I explained before, the only socialist among the Nazis was Goebels. Hitler himself purged and destroyed at an early stage the socialist component of the Nazi party. Goebels, although a self-declared socialist, alligned himself with Hitler and turned against the socialist faction of the nazi party that was completely eradicated. The only thing that remained was the name (nationalist-socialist). Read the facts and you will realize that what I say is correct.

"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions" (Adolph Hitler)

That is the essence of Hitler...and of nazism.

That is also the essence of what is commonly called "Aemrican Liberalism/progressivism" or "European Socialism" today, that vile and ugly view that "work is slavery," that Capitalism is, as Hitler said, "the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance."

That viewpoint is corrosive and cancerous.

Marx & hitler were birds of a feather.

Gary North calls Marx, "the foremost hater and most incessant whiner in the history of Western Civilization. He was a spoiled, overeducated brat who never grew up; he just grew more shrill as he grew older. His lifelong hatred and whining have led to the deaths (so far) of perhaps a hundred million people, depending on how many people perished under Mao’s tyranny. We will probably never know.

“Whiners, if given power, readily become tyrants. Marx was seen by his contemporaries as a potential tyrant. Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-72), the Italian revolutionary, and a rival of Marx’s in the International Workingmen’s Association in the mid- 1860’s, once described Marx as “a destructive spirit whose heart was filled with hatred rather than love of mankind . . . extraordinarily sly, shifty and taciturn. Marx is very jealous of his authority as leader of the Party; against his political rivals and opponents he is vindictive and implacable; he does not rest until he has beaten them down; his overriding characteristic is boundless ambition and thirst for power. Despite the communist egalitarianism which he preaches he is the absolute ruler of his party; admittedly he does everything himself but he is also the only one to give orders and he tolerates no opposition," and went on to call Marx and Hitler two second rate "intellectuals" of their time. One came to power and reined over much destruction, how lucky we are the other didn't ascend to any real political power, we'll never really know.

Engels himself was a very real and virulent anti-Semite; Engels to Paul Lafargue, July 22, 1892: "I begin to understand French anti-Semitism when I see how many Jews of Polish origin and with German names intrude themselves everywhere, arrogate everything to themselves and push themselves forward to the point of creating public opinion in the ville lumiere [Paris], of which the Paris philistine is so proud and which he believes to be the supreme power in the universe."

While Karl Marx lauded chattel slavery! Letter from Marx to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov, 1846: "As for slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects. The only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do not mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the southern regions of North America.

"Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. It is slavery which has given value to the colonies, it is the colonies which have created world trade, and world trade is the necessary condition for large-scale machine industry. Consequently, prior to the slave trade, the colonies sent very few products to the Old World, and did not noticeably change the face of the world. Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance. Without slavery, North America, the most progressive nation, would he transformed into a patriarchal country. Only wipe North America off the map and you will get anarchy, the complete decay of trade and modern civilisation. But to do away with slavery would be to wipe America off the map. Being an economic category, slavery has existed in all nations since the beginning of the world. All that modern nations have achieved is to disguise slavery at home and import it openly into the New World"

I only link contemporary American Liberalism to Marxism/Socialism because that is precisely where its roots lie. Marx is theirs...Engels is theirs and yes, Hitler is theirs too.

Could you imagine ANY American Conservative today saying something like, "We are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance?"

Can you imagine ANY contemporary American Liberal who wouldn't, or hasn't voiced similar sentiments?

JMK,
You select very much your information. You deliberately forget to mention that Marx was jewish, and so was Lenin and Trotsky and many others. As I said, marxism has failed as a cosmo-theory. But to label it antisemitic is crazy.
Now regarding Hitler: No matter what he said at one time, his actions proved otherwise. He dissolved the socialist part of the Nazi party and he promoted capitalistic ventures.

JMK has the topic pretty well covered. (Blue Wind -- Ever hear the expression "self-hating Jew?" That's how it's possible for Marx and Lenin to have been anti-semitic.) IMHO, JMK missed only one important kinship of National Socialism and Marxist-Leninist Socialism: Statism.

The Nazis and Commies shared an obsession with state control of capital and labor. The Nazis were just willing to let individuals own and enjoy capital, within strict limits as well as their own labor -- so long as it was all deployed in the greater interest of the state.

I agree 100% with WF.

And I didn't say that "Marxism was anti-Semitic," I said that Engels seemed to be one, and posted a rather odd quote of his to show why I thought that.

I also posted a letter from Marx, in which he lauded chattel slavery for blacks. I thought that a rather odd position for someone often revered by contemporary Liberals to hold.

Without question, Hitler's nazi Party fought with and ultimately supressed other socialists, the same thing happened in the USSR, where warring groups of socialist revolutionaries visciously fought each other for control. Whichever group gets control, usually hammers those they've defeated.

But Hitler never "promoted capitalist ventures."

Granting monopoly status is a hallmark of socialism. In a free market system, a company that EARNS 90% of the market share in its area is really NOT a monopoly!

Not by a long shot.

It will only keep that share, or anything close to it, in a free/open market, so long as it satisfies the customer. Companies that get large also tend to get bloated and slow moving and become easy targets for smaller, regional competitors, UNLESS government comes in and either regulates these upstarts out of the market, or simply grants the older, established enterprise an official MONOPOLY status.

Hitler granted enterprises such as the Krupps a virtual monopoly status in Germany. He realized that a government managed or run economy NEVER WORKS. BUT the government controlling access to the market is socialistic, NOT "Capitalistic" in any way.

A real monopoly is always a government creation.

In a free/open market, a company can coral 90% of the market, in their sector, and employ tens of thousands of people today, and be swept away by newer, more innovative competition that enters the market in guerilla fashion a month from now.

Opponents of the free market often argue that (1) it results in a series of perpetual booms & busts (it does) and (2) it results in tremendous worker instability, with no company safe, no job is really safe (that too, is true).

Proponents, such as myself, argue that "the positives far outweigh the negatives...over time." The free market creates a far more dynamic, innovative economy with much higher levels of monetary instability and rather large earnings discrepancies between those who have skills in demand and those who only have very basic or more mundane skills.

JMK,
You still avoid my point. You attempted to link marxism to antisemitism. This is completely wrong and I pointed out to you that essentially all leading figures in the history of marxism (i.e. Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg and many others) were jewish and certainly not antisemitic. Hitler was a nazi and not a socialist. Calling Hitler a socialist is out of line with reality. He was a criminal fascist dictator but your intense antipathy to the left should drives you to believe that he was "socialist". Thats simply not true.

Marxism as a whole is apparently a failed financial theory but linking it to nazi theories is completely out of line with reality.

BW, I only offered some quotes from Marx & Engels themselves. Quotes that are overlooked today for their obvious political incorrectness. I believe that Marx was an anti-traditionalist, which ironically is what many Liberals/Leftists are today, as well. He hated the traditions of the world around him, which he blamed for all the negative things, all the brutality and debasement he saw around him.

"Karl Marx was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Trier, Prussia. His father Herschel, descending from a long line of rabbis, although harboring many deistic tendencies, converted to the Christian religion, joining the relatively liberal Lutheran denomination, in order to become a lawyer."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx

Marx was known to be a non-practicing Jew and later embraced atheism. In France, he DID write "On the Jewish Question" (German: "Zur Judenfrage")

"Marx first moved to France, where he re-evaluated his relationship with Bauer and the Young Hegelians, and wrote On the Jewish Question, mostly a critique of current notions of civil rights and political emancipation that also includes several offensive references to Judaism and Jewish culture, albeit from an atheistic standpoint."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question

It is far from uncommon to find atheists who embrace a hatred for all religions, especially the one they're most familiar with. There are few more vigorous in their hatred for the Roman Catholic Church than former Catholics. Why would it be any different in Marx's case?

Freidrich Engels also embraced “anti-Semitic,” or at least anti-Jewish sentiments in a letter to Paul Lafargue in 1892;

“I begin to understand French anti-Semitism when I see how many Jews of Polish origin and with German names intrude themselves everywhere, arrogate everything to themselves and push themselves forward to the point of creating public opinion in the ville lumiere [Paris]...”

Some of the ethnic animus on their parts may best be ckalked up to their passion for "revolutionary rhetoric," which has always engaged in the scapegoating of minorities, usually economic minorities, such as "the merchant class."

Scapegoating the merchant class seems to be a universal human condition, born of ignorance and jealousy that farmers and factory workers often harbor toward those they see as “members of the leisure class.”

The merchant is often seen as one who produces nothing, lives off the labors of those who really produce and is, at best, an economic parasite, when in fact, merchants allow for the wider distribution and greater profitability of the worker’s/farmer’s wares.

Hitler did the same thing. The Jews were targeted because they were, largely an entreprenurial group, as much as Hitler’s racial theories. After all, six million “others,” from Gypsies, to assorted dissidents and “criminals” were also exterminated by the Nazis.

To give you an idea of just how universal a condition this is, a fireman I worked with, is married to a Malaysian woman whose family migrated there from China. The Chinese in Malaysia are shopkeepers, merchants, restaurateurs and professionals...AND they are called “the Jews of Malaysia,” because of their entreprenurial spirit. As a result, every thirty or forty years, the indigenous Malaysian people (mostly farmers and factory workers) are whipped into an anti-merchant frenzy and they chase (pogrom) those of Chinese descent out. The same happened in Idi Amin’s Uganda, where there were migrants there, largely from India, who set up shops, etc, the same way the Chinese of Malaysia did and the Jews of Europe did and of course, when things get hard - when the crops failed or when factories closed, these “outsiders,” or “parasites” (as those that don’t understand the value of commerce are wont to call them) are the first to be targeted. Race plays a large part, making them easier targets, but the underlying economics, or more aptly “the politics of economics,” that pits worker/farmer against merchant/professional is the real fuel that ignites this hatred.

Marxism as a whole is apparently a failed financial theory but linking it to nazi theories is completely out of line with reality. (Blue Wind)

BW, there are only three economic systems that currently exist, these are; (1) Socialism (state-run/managed economies) both nazi Germany and the USSR were state managed economies. Socialism abolishes all private property and might best be described as a “government led partnership with business,” and it has never worked, (2) Fascism, where government allows for the ownership of private property, even privately held businesses and merely exerts control over access to the marketplace via stringent regulation and legal codes. Fascism might best be described as a “business led partnership with government,” – Mussolini’s Italy was a Fascist state, so are most First World economies today from England & the U.S. to France & Sweden, and (3) the Free Market (commonly called “Capitalism”) in which private property is sacrosanct above all and the government is Constitutionally mandated from involving itself in the economy, which is what the U.S. started out as.

Free Markets are inherently unstable, but they are also far more dynamic and innovative as they reward innovation and progress above all else.

It is somewhat disingenuous for those who consistently oppose the current status quo by deriding contemporary Fascism as “Capitalism,” because it seems to attack BOTH Free Markets & Fascism in one breath, while pushing for some form of Socialism, rather than the ONLY viable alternative to contemporary Fascism, which is the Free Market, as scary and yes, unstable as that might be.

Various Socialists sects or Parties have always fought with each other over power and control. Hitler’s Germany was no different. Hitler despised and fought viscously against ALL the other Socialists in Germany, so did Lenin’s group in Russia, exiling, then killing Trotsky in Mexico.

Hitler and Stalin both advanced the cause of Socialism, NOT Fascism. Before Hitler had an alliance with Mussolini, he had a pact with Stalin, a fellow traveler.

As I said, “Could you imagine ANY American Conservative today saying something like, "We are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance?" (Adolph Hitler)

“And can you imagine ANY contemporary American Liberal who wouldn't, or hasn't voiced similar sentiments?”

JMK,
I did not see a single sentense in what you posted above that would qualify Marx as an antisemite. And, again, the whole marxist philosophy evolved with leaders that happened to be of jewish origin. A key person in the evolution of Marxism was Lenin, who was of course jewish. Leon Trotsky (real name Lev Bronstein) was also jewish. Want some more? Essentially all the Bolshevik leaders during the Russian revolution were jews. People like Kamenev, Zinoviev, Karl Radek, Urtisky, Yakov Sverdlov (head of the Bolshevik's Party's Central Committee) and many others. Not to mention marxists that played key roles later like Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg. Were all of them antisemites? Of course not. Many of them became atheists later, but they were never antisemites. Just go back and read some history.

BW, an "atheist" is NOT a Jew, nor a Christian, nor a Hindu...ATHEISM itself is a faith, a religion.

Marx had converted from Judaism, first to Christianity, than to atheism long before he wrote The Communist Manifesto.

His partner and co-writer Friedrich Engels was also an avowed atheist and was not originally Jewish.

Ergo, Socialism/Communism is NOT a Jewish movement/creation...and I can't imagine a single Jew today wishing to claim it as such, for it has been an abomination that has cost hundreds of millions of people their lives - victims of Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, and scores of other socialist tyrants.

Before Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto, with Engels, he alone wrote "On the Jewish Question," a screed that assailed both Judaism and the Jewish culture from an atheistic perspective.

"Marx first moved to France, where he re-evaluated his relationship with Bauer and the Young Hegelians, and wrote On the Jewish Question, mostly a critique of current notions of civil rights and political emancipation that also includes several offensive references to Judaism and Jewish culture, albeit from an atheistic standpoint."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question

It is far from uncommon to find atheists who embrace a hatred for all religions, especially the one they're most familiar with. There are few more vigorous in their hatred for the Roman Catholic Church than former Catholics. Why would it be any different with Marx and Judaism?

It DOES NOT MATTER ONE BIT whether Lenin, or Trotsky were or were not anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic. It only matters that Socialism itself was based on an atheistic, in fact, anti-RELIGIOUS foundation. ALL religious practice was banned in Russia after the Communist Revolution, ALL religions, including Judaism.

As I said, even Hitler's anti-Semitism was largely based on scapegoating the "merchant class" of that country, which at that time, happened to be largely Jewish. The racial component is vital in all such cases, as it makes the targeted group that much easier to target.

Even that can be debated easier than one could debate whether or not Adolph Hitler was a Socialist - "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions," makes it very clear what Hitler was.

(Speech of May 1, 1927)

I've given you the history of Socialism through Marx's biography and some of his and Engel's bibliography and I've given you Hitler, not out of some interpretive book, but in some of his very own words.

At the very least, it's something to think about.

You have been very selective in the words you picked. I can pick words that Reagan or even W have used in the past that would make them sound like socialists also. That does not mean they were though.

Blue Wind: There is a big difference between being "of Jewish origin" and being Jewish.

Here's an interesting article that offers some insight into how easy it is for people "of Jewish origin" to be anti-semitic: Wikipedia - Yevsektsiya

BTW, I think Das Kapital is a brilliant treatise on the relationship between capital and labor. I honestly don't understand how his analysis led Marx to the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848 My best guess is that he was excessively influenced by Hegel and Feuerbach.

One of the grand ironies of my life (if anything about my life can be considered "grand" ironically or otherwise;-) is that I became a radical capitalist as a result of being forced to read Das Kapital in college. A Marxist world history professor was certain that reading that book would convert all of his thoughtful students into fellow travelers.

My recollection is that only two of us actually read and thought about Marx's work: Myself and a nutbag anti-semite who was eventually expelled from the university because of a violent pro-Palestine outburst at an on-campus anti-zionist seminar -- he was just too crazy even for the exterminate Israel crowd.

I have to say that Karl Marx, along with John Barth and Jonathan Swift, was one of the greatest literary influences on my life.

There is a big difference between being "of Jewish origin" and being Jewish..

Wow..see what I am learning. I dont think so. What you say is similar to:"There is a big difference between being of Italian origin and being Italian". Being Jewish is not just a matter of religion.

Judaism is a religion.

"Jewish" is an adherant of Judaism, it is NOT an ethnicity.

A Paul Reich from Germany, who is also Jewish is a German Jew. German is the ethnicity, Jewish is the religion. A Pablo Miccio, who is Jewish and Italian, is an Italian Jew. Italian being the ethnicity and Jewish being the religion.

Your analogy, comparing WF's statement to, "There is a big difference between being of Italian origin and being Italian" is invidious, as the correct analogy is, "There is a big difference between being an Italian Catholic and being an Italian," for that is true, since NOT all Italians are Catholics.

For instance, an Italian Catholic, or any generic Italian who comes to America and still maintains Italy or Catholicism (the Vatican) as their primary allegience, is NOT and CANNOT be a "good citizen" of the United States.

A "good citizen" of any country places there loyalties to the nation where they live and are citizens, FIRST & FOREMOST.

Look, Marx's screed "On the Jewish Question" was an anti-Jewish (the religion) piece, penned by an avowed atheist, who detested ALL religion. It was also anti-Hebraic culture, in so far as it maligned the cultural aspects of most Jews in Europe at that time.

That screed was later used by many haters, including Hitler, to rationalize their hatred of Judaism and the Jewish people.

Socialism was an abomination. Perhaps the most anti-human, anti-freedom philosophy ever produced and to link that to Judaism through Marx and the fact that some of the Bolsheviks of Russia were, in fact, Jews, is to cast a terrible blight on the Jewish people. One they neither merit nor need.

It is like maligning Christianity, especially Catholicism to Hitler, when Hitler had long abandoned Christianity in favor of Occultism and, in fact, abhored the Catholic Church, as he openly sought to create a German religion with himself supplanting Christ as the godhead.

But this has strayed way off the topic of whether or not Hitler was a Socialist, which was also way off the original topic of whether Conservatives who oppose the war in Iraq are motivated by anti-Semitism.

Suffice to say that Judaism/Jewish is a religion, not an thnicity, Hitler, by his own words, ["We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions,"] was indeed a Socialist and Conservatives who oppose the war and consistently have opposed our other "foreign entanglements" (Buchanan and company HAVE opposed the first Gulf War, the Balkans, etc) and consistently oppose U.S. foreign aid are most probably NOT motivated by anti-Semitism, but by a consistent principle, wrong, or unworkable as that principle may often be.

I think that just about covers everything.

"You have been very selective in the words you picked. I can pick words that Reagan or even W have used in the past that would make them sound like socialists also. That does not mean they were though." (Blue Wind)

Not so.

In fact, you'll NEVER find a quote by any contemporary American politician, in which they proclaim to be socialists," as Hitler did with, "We are socialists..."

Moreover, America's economic structure is currently the same economic framework used by virtually ALL First World economies, NOT the Free Market/Capitalism, but Corporatism or Fascism.

Often people mistake Corporatist pronouncements in favor of welfare, social security and even national health care plans as "socialist," when they are, in fact, Corporatist/Fascist in that they maintain private control over many of the facets of those programs - IE. HUD Housing assisting poor people to become "homeowners," and with Social Security in which each citizen is supposed to "own" their own social security acount (thus the SS#) and all the national health care programs advanced here are run through various private health care providers.

Albania and Bulgaria were among two of the very last holdouts clinging to true Socialism and both came into the 21st Century as veritable Third World basketcases.

It is true that Hitler saw that government bureaucrats were unable to run complex businesses. Ludwig von Mises saw it long before him. Stalin saw it slightly later than Adolph Hitler. In other words, Stalin's USSR became a pseudo-Socialist state, as did Hitler's Germany did, ONLY AFTER the Socialist model proved an utter and abysmal failure.

We must be honest about such things.

(*) Hitler was born and raised a Christian. Hitler later abandoned that religion for the occult teachings of the Thule Gestalt and later still attempted to create his own Germanic relgion.

(*) Marx was born into a Jewish family that converted to Lutheranism. Marx later became a devout atheist and anti-religionist.

(*) Hitler as did Stalin, started off as devout Socialists and later realized that the Marxist economic model is absurd and unworkable in any form and both tyrants tinkered around the edges of Socialism to make their economies more workable, ultimately resulting in their granting government monopoly status to certain businesses and business owners, with the state getting a large cut of the profits.

One of the myths of history is that Hitler "was worse" then Mao and Stalin, as he murdered for an ignoble purpose, while they killed for a noble cause. That is precisely like arguing that Ted Bundy was "better than" John Wayne Gacey and Jeffrey Dahmer because the latter two were gay men who preyed on young boys, while Bundy was at least a heterosexual.

The entire premise is absurd.

We have three choices when it comes to an economic model;

(1) The unworkable Socialism

(2) Corporatism/Fascism which currently rules the day

or (3) Free Market/Capitalism which was a brilliant, albeit an often wild and very shaky success from about 1789 through 1912 America, when our government was and remained Constitutionally mandated from manipulating the economy.

I can understand people being against Corporatism, as Libertarians ARE, but I CANNOT fathom those who oppose both Corporatism AND Free Markets, lumping them both under the unitary banner of "Capitalism," especailly those like yourself who recognize that Socialism is an unworkable construct.

Where does that leave such people? Advocating a Fourth Way? Or some kind of yet unfound reformed type of Socialism that CAN work?

No wonder neither American Liberals, nor European Socialists seem able to articulate a coherant and workable economic alternative that galavanizes or even attracts anyone.

Here's an interesting article that offers some insight into how easy it is for people "of Jewish origin" to be anti-semitic: Wikipedia - Yevsektsiya (WF)

There's been a great example of this in relatively recent times.

Has there been a greater, more profound anti-Semite to appear on the American scene than the late William Kunstler, himself an avowed atheist of Jewish descent. A man who once said, "I only use the (U.S.) Constitution to destroy the Constitution." A man who spent his life despising what he termed the "bourgoise Jews."

Atheists tend to be far more anti-relgion than they are even anti-God, or anti-spirituality. Most have a tremendous and passionate antipathy for their own religions. When that is combined with a personality that is also anti-traditional, one who sees the current day traditions, customs and mores as the reason for all the ills of the world, that creates an extremely antagonistic personality, one who would often prefer total disorder over the current order and that is a very dangerous, borderline psychotic way of viewing things.

"Jewish" is an adherant of Judaism, it is NOT an ethnicity.

You are entitled to your opinions. But let me assure you that the above perception is wrong. And I am better positioned to judge that than you are. Trust me on that.

BW that is a superfluous topic, except in regards to allegience. Anyone who puts another identification above the primary identification of the nation of their citizenry (for an American of any nationality, that's the United States) is, of course, a "foreign agent."

Be that as it may, it matters NOT at all.

William Kunstler despised "bourgoise Jews," and Marx despised all religions, but especially the religion he knew most well, Judaism.

Like Kunslter, he also maligned Hebraic culture - the culture of the Orthodox Jews in Marx's case and the current day Reformed Jews in Kuntsler's case.

Anyone who puts another identification above the primary identification of the nation of their citizenry (for an American of any nationality, that's the United States) is, of course, a "foreign agent."

Are you saying that all Italian-Americans, Greek-Americans, Chinese-Americans, etc are foreign agents? Wow, we must have millions of foreign agents in this country!
Ethnicity is different than nationality. They are all good Americans, but they have different ethnic backgrounds.

Any AMERICAN of ANY ethnicity who puts their loyalties to ANY OTHER nation/religious interest ABOVE that of the United States is acting as a de facto "foreign agent."

You cannot put any other loyalty above that of the United States and be an American.

Catholics from JFK to Mario Cuomo RIGHTLY had to show they WOULD NOT put their religious convictions above their civic duty - Kennedy distanced himself from the Catholic Church and Cuomo supported abortion.

Same for politicians like Joe Lieberman, he's expected, RIGHTLY SO, to put America's interests AHEAD of Israels' and to eschew supporting/opposing measures based on his own religious beliefs...it's part of being a politician in a secular society.

Part of being a citizen in a secular society is NOT putting one's own religious beliefs above the secular laws of one's country...and, for that matter, not putting the interests of ANY OTHER country equal with or ahead of those of the United States.

I trust that very few Americans put ANY other background or belief system ahead of their belief in the United States.

If the U.S. were to declare war on Ireland for some reason (I'm part Irish), I wouldn't have any misplaced loyalties, and yeah, I've been there and I know a number of really good people from there.

I'd say to any American who would, under such conditions, consider siding with Ireland or moving there to fight for their "real homeland," to "Please, go there now, you're not really American anyway. Your loyalties and sympathies lie somewhere else.

I'd say the very same thing to someone whos misplaced loyalties lied with Italy, Jordan, Israel or China. There arer NO EXCEPTIONS. There ARE NO special circumstances.

JMK,
Noone disagrees with that. All I am saying is that there are people of different ethnic backgrounds. Being Jewish is not just a religion, it is an ethnic identity like Italian, Greek, etc. Of course all Americans should and do put America over any other allegiance. The point of the argument was simply that being Jewish is not just a religion.

We can agree to disagree over the ethnicity of Jewishness.

My belief is that an Italian Jew named Pablo Miccio would be an Italian and Jewish, whereas a German Jew named Gunther Wasserstein would be German and Jewish. Outside of a common religion those two individuals share no apparent ethnic bond, at least no more than would an Irish-Catholic and an Italian-Catholic.

Be that as it may, I don't think it's at all surprising that Karl Marx, who turned to atheism would write a screed like, "On the Jewish Question" which was an anti-Jewish (the religion) piece, as many former Catholics have written similarly passionate pieces against the Catholic Church. It was also anti-Hebraic culture, in so far as it maligned the cultural aspects of most Jews in Europe at that time and that too isn't at all surprising coming as it did from an avowed anti-tradionalist.

Now I'd doubt that Marx's intent was any hatred for the Jewish people, but it DID create a springboard from which others, with actual hatred, could jump.

For that reason, I prefer to consider Marxism/Socialism to be the construct of an emotionally imbalanced, avowed atheist, who despised all relgion and most people as well. After all, what kind of person could laud American chattel slavery for blacks other than a real "people-hater?"

Given that there are ONLY three known economic systems and agreeing that one of the three, Socialism (the "nationalized" or government run economy) is completely unworkable, then it stands to reason that there are ONLY two workable systems left, either the Free and unfettered Market, with all its risks and uncertainties, or some form of Corporatism/Fascism which most contemporary economies subscribe to today.

If you oppose the U.S. style of Corporatism and wish to replace it with a more Free & Open Market, I could probably find tremendous agreement with you on many levels. If, however, you'd wish merely to replace the current U.S. form of Corporatism with the form of Corporatism favored in the past by nations like France and Sweden, which has resulted in intractable double digit unemployment, high inflation and a huge, cumbersome and burdensome welfare state that crushes economic vitality and keeps innovation out of the marketplace, we probably disagree, though I can't imagine why anyone who'd honestly look at places like France and Sweden would seek to imitate their very flawed economic system.