If you see increased stupid in the comments here, its because Charles Johnson has sent over his readers – who have referred to Arabs as “sand ticks” – to defend the indefensible. Johnson:
as bad as segregation was (and it was terrible), to compare America during the time of Brown vs. the BOE (when we were dismantling segregation) to genocidal Nazi Germany with its pogroms, death camps, and forced labor camps, and more than six million murders, is not just ludicrous and wrong, it is a morally bankrupt argument that verges on Holocaust denial.
This isn’t a game of who suffered more, but blacks went through their own genocide in their transportation to the Americas. Millions of people were killed due to the color of their skin. Then they were sold into slavery, and then the government mandated their status as less than human via Jim Crow. As I said before, I don’t believe in whitewashes of history. Slavery is one of the original sins of our nation, and the practice of segregation at the same time we were liberating Jewish people from their extermination by Nazis is one of history’s great ironies.
Conservatives like Johnson have this knee-jerk aversion to any retelling of American history that isn’t a kindergarten-level simplification of things. Our country is always pure as snow in their minds, and they see any attempts to tell the full story as some sort of assault. Yet, the true insult is acting as if these things shouldn’t bother our pretty little minds, and to bring them up is akin to sedition. It’s just stupid.
We live in the greatest country on earth, but it is a country who for far too long saw blacks and other minorities in much the same way that Nazi Germany saw Jewish people – as subhuman slave labor. History, American history, is far more complex than white hats versus black hats.
But don’t tell that to the right. They can’t handle that sort of talk.
In Johnson’s original post, he wanted badly to attack Sen. Obama for drawing any kind of parallel between America’s racial history and the plague of Nazism. In order to do this, he ended up effectively defending segregation, because he tries to make it less horrible than Nazi thought. It wasn’t. Sorry, any kind of policy where you’re okaying the de-humanization of people is the kind of thought we have to throw in the dustbin of history. There’s no defending it, not even for making a cheap and incorrect political hit.
Don’t forget about the Native American genocide. So much to be proud of.
Well, there is a lot to be proud of in that we recognized and to some extent fixed our own problems. We didn’t need another country to come here to stop America’s slave-holding and extermination of Native Americans — eventually, the more decent impulses in America stopped slavery and the efforts to kill off Native Americans. However, those decent impulses didn’t tend to be among the folks who said, “Oh, it’s bad, but it’s not really EVIL. I mean, look at how the Arabs treat slaves! look at Turkish genocide toward Armenians!” The people who right America’s wrongs never are the folks who want to minimize the wrongdoing. They call it out and rub our faces in it and say “We are better than this, so this is going to stop.”
Seriously, I recommend watching “Gentlemen’s Agreement” to be reminded of the rampant anti-Semitism in the U.S. even after Americans watched the Nuremberg trials. The movie hammers home the point that the people who only say, “Oh, that’s terrible” when there’s nothing to lose, are the people who let it keep happening.
Don’t see too many lizards yet. hmmm….
>Sorry, any kind of policy where you’re okaying the de-humanization of people is the kind of thought we have to throw in the dustbin of history.
Oh the irony of seeing the purveyor of the conservatives=nazis meme getting on his high horse about this..
Oh the irony of seeing the purveyor of the conservatives=nazis meme getting on his high horse about this..
?
To the extent that conservatives OK the dehumanization of people — like, oh I don’t know, gays and Muslims and Arabs still seem to be popular to dehumanize — they are engaging in Nazi-like thought. What’s the problem with that meme?
Pathetic how the racists and genocide junkies at LGF think they have the moral high ground.
I dunno about anyone else, but I’m so looking forward to reading their election threads after McCain concedes. It’d be like a Red Sox fan reading the NYYFans.com game threads after the 2004 ALCS.
Oh the irony of seeing the purveyor of the conservatives=nazis meme getting on his high horse about this..
I don’t follow you. Please explain with specific, provable examples.
I dunno about anyone else, but I’m so looking forward to reading their election threads after McCain concedes. It’d be like a Red Sox fan reading the NYYFans.com game threads after the 2004 ALCS.
Um. Yogi Berra just called, and it ain’t over.
Volunteer. Make calls. Canvass. Kick in some dough. Get out there. Be part of the historic campaign, part of the Good Guys.
Now hop to it. If and when the Good Guys triumph, then we’ll celebrate. But not beforehand.
>To the extent that conservatives OK the dehumanization of people — like, oh I don’t know, gays and Muslims and Arabs still seem to be popular to dehumanize — they are engaging in Nazi-like thought. What’s the problem with that meme?
Oh, I dunno, perhaps the fact that Nazis are best known for attempting genocide. But hey, I get it – anything that is dehumanizing is Nazi like, no matter how silly the comparison. Come to think of it, since Oliver regularly dehumanizes conservatives (knuckle-draggers, Nazi’s), I guess he’s engaging in Nazi-like thought too! Hyperbole for everyone!
Yeah, it’s worth pointing out, for example, that if we rank terrorist organizations by the number of Americans they’ve killed, al Qaeda sits in distant second place. And the LGFers won’t have any clue who’s in first place.
You’re right in everything you say here. But the thing is, you don’t even have to go there to reveal these guys for the morons they are.
Here’s all you need:
1. Obama said that America’s struggle with the Nazis made Americans more aware of our domestic race issues.
2. It is in fact the case that America’s struggle with the Nazis made Americans more aware of our domestic race issues.
Therefore, without even addressing the issue whether segregation morally equivalent to Nazism, it is clear that Charles Johnson is a moron.
Volunteer. Make calls. Canvass. Kick in some dough. Get out there. Be part of the historic campaign, part of the Good Guys.
Now hop to it. If and when the Good Guys triumph, then we’ll celebrate. But not beforehand.
I’m doing that, and I’m one of the volunteer lawyers on the legal team for Obama’s Virginia campaign. But I can also enjoy the delusion of the LGF trogs.
LGF is always good for a few laughs. Them and Pam “Atlas Shrugs” Whatever-her-name-is.
“Oh, I dunno…”
Haplo, just shut the fuck up. No one here buys your false equivalency.
On the one side you have people who attack others for being different.
On the other side you have people attacking those who would attack others for merely being different.
Only ’cause I want to drop back in and see how I was attacked I am gonna try to help y’all see the point. Killing as many people as Nazi’s did is not morally equivalent to segregation. Separate but equal was wrong, slavery was wrong (and still is, take a gander at where it still thrives), but we as Americans have fixed those things. It is people like those on this type of blog that keep the wound open, that continue to point out the mistakes of the past. Good luck with you personal relationships if this is you M.O..
The post I read over at LGF in no way justified segregation, it simply pointed out that Sen. Obama, like many left-wing folk, compared this county to Nazi Germany, more proof of his FAR left ideology, which I see as dangerous for this great Nation.
Something VERY important that we totally gloss over in our history, but which was the first thing I thought of when I heard this comment…
Anybody remember EUGENICS? AMERICA INVENTED IT.
We were forcibly sterilizing the retarded and disabled in this country before Hitler was even a blip on the radar screen.
The Nazis LEARNED THAT FROM US.
Also, forced relocation of mass numbers of ethnic minorities to remote areas (such as we did to the Indians)? Another one we taught the Nazis.
Now, in fairness, concentration camps they got from the British (see “Boer War”). And the anti-Semitism had pervaded all of European culture for centuries. But considering that no less a famous jurist than Oliver Wendell Holmes authored a defense of the the sterilization of the dumb and infirm (”…society can prevent their propagation by medical means in the first place. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”), you damn well better believe that there was a lot going on in “the land of the free” which was “uncomfortably similar” to Nazi Germany, because we thought of it first!
The LGF tools are heading this way? Sweet. Should be like shooting fish in a barrel for your crew. My gut says you disable moderation and get the adsense targeting anal stimulation, guns and various porn sites for this post. Swim in cash as your reward for the LGF infestation. Or just shoot the fish but if it’s like drudge a link will bring a consistency of stupidity and ignorance unlike anything experienced by most people in a lifetime. It is one of the most amusing things an informed person can see in realtime. Have at it.
God, I hate being linked to this sink hole.
Fantastic! You said everything that I was going to.
The Nazis took much of their methodology from Marxism in general and Bolshevism in particular. State “secret” police, death camps, a military economy under state direction and a collectivist, militant mentality in general were all taken from the sort of regimes first established by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. It is in Marxist ideology that the National Socialists, a far Left socialist faction, are transformed into “Rightists”. Heretofore that sort of label would have been more appropriately used to describe the Prussian monarchists who wanted to re-establish the Kaiser – something quite anathema to the Nazi heirarchy.
Likewise, Negroes were not “slaves” during the Second World War, at least not in the US. They were persecuted, treated as second-class citizens and the like, but were not “slaves”. Nor were any groups in the US rounded up and exterminated in the mid-to-late 20th century – unlike, for example, Jews under German socialism or Ukranians under Russian socialism.
Two critical elements of history – at least any coherent history – are those of time and fact. It is ridiculous, for example, to confuse the behavior of Americans during the 20th century regarding, say, the British, with events from the late 18th and early 19th century – that Americans were at war with Britain during this early period did not entail they were flooding into the UK to “take the war to London” or other such nonsense. These periods involve a considerable difference in time, yes? So also confusing the era of American slavery in the antebellum South with social conditions in the US during the 20th century, particularly the latter half. Likewise, the staunch and well documented racist socialism of a number of Left-wing movements – to very much include Nazism, as well as pro-Russian Bolshevism and pro-Han Maoism – ought to give one pause before an engaging in applications of Godwin’s Law to “those Republican fascist fiends”, etc.
If you are inclined to berate this “lizard”, or defend your own ludicrous twisting of the historical record to serve present political ends, please keep these issues in mind. It will at least make you sound less foolish in your attempts to “thrash” your critics. Perhaps (dare I hope it) a few of you might even adopt logical coherence as a methodology – I assure you, a system of thought infinitely superior in utility to the application of Marxian alchemical formulae in regards the study of history.
Haplo9, where/when did Oliver compare conservatives to Nazis?
Americans are not very knowledgeable about their own history.
And it isn’t by accident.
Marvel at the blank stares if you mention the genocide of the indigenous Americans…
That wasn’t an accident either.
We’ve had over a half a decade of stormfront-esque attacks on Arabs at LGF. To pretend they’re anything other than eugenicists is a farce. Charles Johnson is a failed musician turned Hal Turnerite
You wrote, “Slavery is one of the original sins of our nation, …” Slavery was not a national problem; it was a regional problem. There were many states, many people, many whites, who did not condone or practice slave ownership, but who proactively took a stance against it. In fact, the slave question became one of the main issues behind the great Civil War.
So don’t pour national guilt or even white guilt on us for a regional problem that my nation and my white ancestors helped to eliminate.
I’ve read all the material involved, on both sides.
It’s as simple as this:
1. Barack Obama made the comparison that the Brown v. BOE era in America was not dissimilar to what went on in Nazi Germany. That is a stretch. Segregating people and exterminating them aren’t even in the same ballpark. Ain’t even the same f*ckin’ sport.
2. Charles Johnson took umbrage at the comparison, and rightly so. America is not the Third Reich, and never has been. Or a lot of you (and most likely I as well) would be in concentration camps or dead.
3. Defending America against a comparison to Hitler’s Germany does not by default stand as a justification for segregation.
4. Segregation sucked. We all know that. Charles Johnson knows it, too. It was, in fact, the federal government that struck down segregation laws and sent federal troops to enforce integration by fiat and by the gun.
5. To strongly disagree with Obama’s comparison of segregation-era America as like Nazi Germany is not by any stretch of the imagination approval of segregation, just as disagreeing with Obama or his policies does not make you a racist.
You’re reading way too much into it, Oliver.
The only question is, are you reading into Charles Johnson’s statements what you wish to see as opposed to what is really there, based on his politics and yours?
Focus:
Brown vs. the BOE was decided in 1954. Obama can not compare the United States in 1954 to Nazi Germany by any stretch of his glorious imagination.
whoa, including all those LGF attack dogs, you appear to have 30 readers.
FAIL
Your argument was baseless to begin with and when debunked you went off topic and set up a straw man. The issue in the quote was the comparison of civil rights era America to Nazi Germany. There is no comparison. It’s not the same thought process, it’s not the same philosophy, it’s not the same type of system. The only similarity is that the cause of segregation and the cause of the holoucaust was racisism. Now, noting that racism was the cause for both of these things happening is not the same thing as saying that they were based on the same thought process or the same philosophy.
Keeping in mind the prevelence of racism throught modern history, systematic, intentional genocide, based on nothing else but pure racial hatred and the desire to eliminate that race for no other purpose, has only resulted from one – Nazi Germany. (you could argue pol pot and the turkish armenian genocide – as well as numerous african genocides, but in those cases, the people who were systematically killed and their systematic killers were engaged in armed conflict to some degree – Nazis and Jews were not).
There was no policy during the civil rights era to kill all african americans. You understand that, right? So if you do, do you then understand why saying that Nazi Germany and America during the civil rights years were based on the same thought process? Boy I hope you do. If you don’t I encourage you to dig into some difficult philosophy (maybe some logical positivism or analytical philosophy) and excercise your brain. If you’re going to discuss nazism, civil rights, and politics, be prepared for the task. There is a huge difference between systematic genocide perpetrated by a totalitarian military dictatorship and segregation based on race. It’s huge. And yes, one is worse than the other. Alot worse. There are alot of jews who would have been very happy to simply have been left, segregated, in the ghettos.
And as to your straw man, you know what you did. Yes, hundreds died on the slave boats died and hundreds, maybe thousands died under the abhorrent conditions of slavery. But that’s not what’s at issue here. And you know it.
These guys (Gateway, LGF, etc.) are going to just get absolutely repugnant under President Obama. In some ways I look forward to it; they’re going to show us all who they really are.
Haplo9, criticizing people’s views is not dehumanizing. In fact, I would say it is a sign of respect: if someone has no power and no meaning, why bother criticizing their views? You think slave owners worry about what the slaves think?
It is sad that conservatives cannot see the difference between their treatment of gays and other minorities (which denies civil rights) and liberals’ treatment of conservatives (which acknowledges that conservatives are fully participatory members of our society, and that’s exactly why their views must be contested).
Conservatives have become so intolerant of having their views challenged that they think they are being “dehumanized” when their politics are criticized. It reminds me of the claim that Trent Lott was getting “lynched” when he was criticized for praising Strom Thurmond’s 1948 presidential platform of segregation — people who talk that way clearly have no idea what lynching really was.
Dehumanization is saying that someone is less than you: that their sex makes them unfit to serve in the military, or that their religion makes them unfit to serve in the Cabinet or as president, or that their sexual orientation makes them unfit to raise children. That is dehumanizing. Criticism of such views is simply part of living in a pluralistic, democratic society, which is NOT dehumanizing, but in fact is a great benefit to us all.
OK. Let me just say that selling people into slavery is a terrible crime. But it wasn’t just white people that stand guilty. It was the winning West African tribes that sold their defeated rivals. So there is black complicity in this monstrous crime. But…In the interest of honesty, where do your figures of millions of deaths come from? I don’t want to minimize one death of slave. But these slaves were considered to be capital equipment by cold hearted traders. Why would they intentionally destroy their own source of wealth? That would be monetarily irrational.
Everyone seems to be jumping on Obama’s comments w/r/t the Nazis after the death camps were found out about. I think a more legitimate comparison would be Germany in 1934-37 before wholesale murder became domestic policy. The ghettos, seizure of property, etc. were eerily similar to our own segregation.
That’s what he was talking about.
And what Rheinhard said.
Once again, conservative Republicans don’t hear what is said and jump to silly conclusions.
The idea that Nazism was bad only because of the genocide is incredibly ludicrous. It was the ideology behind Nazism — the belief that some people were less human than others, less deserving of equal citizenship and participation in society — that allowed the Final Solution to occur. Do you think if Hitler had come to power announcing that he planned to gas millions of Jews, he would have had the same support? It was the regular German, the one didn’t join the party, or joined only to get a bureaucratic job, who believed that Jews and gays and the mentally retarded were not entirely human who allowed this to happen. Genocide can’t be committed by one man, or even by one party.
I really can’t believe the moral equivalency that says the only thing troubling about Nazism was the body count. If immorality is measured solely by that, then the Allies were incredibly immoral in WWII because they caused the deaths of millions of Axis soldiers and civilians. Except the Allies killed only when they had to, and for a purpose that eventually would stop all the killing. It’s not about the body count; it’s about why you kill.
The Nazis killed because they didn’t think Jews were equal to themselves, but were instead taking up too much ‘living space,’ and were an economic threat to Aryans that needed to be squashed. Homosexuals and the retarded weren’t equals; they were impurities in the race that needed to be squashed as well. Similarly, some white Americans lynched blacks who were perceived as posing any social or economic threat to whites. It was possible solely because other whites tolerated it: other whites tolerated the murder of Emmett Till (killed in 1955, AFTER Brown v. Board somehow failed to single handedly get rid of institutional racism and indifference to black life).
The people who see race in America as bisected by Brown v. Board exhibit their own ignorance. Blacks after Brown still could not vote, which is the most important way a citizen of a democracy can control the laws and their administration. I am amused to see conservatives, who cannot square Brown with their originalist philosophies of the Constitution, and who regularly condemn the Supreme Court for its “judicial activism,” saying that because Brown was decided in 1954, clearly America no longer took a dehumanizing view of blacks.
Exactly. Spot on, PG.
golly, Oliver, you can stomach reading that stuff. Like FreeRepublic, those big winger sites don’t give a dissenter a chance to comment. Smaller ones will, and like yours, there’s some debate, but eventually their minds close up and they spew the same boilerplate of Reaganisms.
My suggestions to others here: over use of the Nazi stereotype shuts down thought and debate even when it’s appropriate and comparing Misery of different ethnics tends to open up more problems than it helps. The left over uses “nazi” and the right overuses Holocaust as in the the ‘unborn’ (never a concern of politics in the past and now the unborn are suddenly considered “people” not just possible future beings.
I totally agree on Oliver’s point. Saying that the only modern “Holocaust” is the Jewish one (or victims of communism and the unborn) plays to the Rightwing’s attempt to co-opt the Jewish American vote (so far mostly unsucessfully) while ignoring the longer term misery of African-Americans in slavery and discrimination is an attempt to denigrate a “liberal” voting bloc. The Right ignores the “Passage” to America that estimated to have caused the death’s of 6 million Africans…and considering the subsequaint life under slavery misery seems to be more than comparable to the “holocaust” as the perpertrators of the attempted ‘elimination’ were in power only for a short time unlike the centuries of power of the racist exploiters of African labor. However, most Americans understand this and want to put that evil past behind us and they Vote for Obama….let the Right remain deluded and keep their racist vote.
The election of Obama could really eliminate all these comparisons…a strong supporter of Israel’s right to exist while being an African American (with a scotch irish background too) could just be the Moderating effect upon Misery Competition. No excuses, then, we’ll all be in the same boat although extreme income difference of various groups and a huge prison population of minorities and whites still needs to be addresses.
(as I type: Holy shit, NY’s Gov. Patterson, black and brilliantly sight impaired, is on C-span quoteing Ayn Rand as a ‘great author. Holy shit. You wingers might want to check that out. Is he just trying to ‘co-opt’ wingers or somthing or what? _)
Rheinhard, you’re an idiot.
Eugenics was first put to paper and the term coined in the UK, by Sir Francis Galton. Next time, before shoving your head up your ass, at least try Wikipedia, mmm-kay.
Speaking of which, the Left’s favorite dead economist, John Maynard Keynes, got chub whenever Galton’s ideas were discussed.
Of course, Charles never defended segregation in the first place. I challenge any objective reading of the article in question to reach any other conclusion.
Objectivity hasn’t been a highly valued virtue in this presidential race, however. From either side of the political fence.
Green Footballs attacked Oliver as being the “Dumbest Blogger”. This time I actually went to pinhead Johnson’s website to see his argument.
wow, that’s debate!(?__) When a winger can’t win a debate note that they always go into namecalling and trying to suggest the oppostion is “teh stupid”. That’s like comparing Palin’s offspring with Obama’s.
end of argument. Oliver won big time. As will Obama (despite a huge racist vote for McCain).
I wonder how many comments you’ve deleted until now? My guess is hundreds.
people have enslaved people for thousands of years and it still goes on today. It is disgusting and vile. America did not “invent” it and we are not uniqely guilty of the sin of slavery. America has disgusting and vile parts of its history (slavery, indigenous people slaughter, segregation, etc, etc). We know that.
We also have a system of government, body of laws, and introspective society that allows America to change its ways, adapt, grow, improve, fight for justice, and provide shelter to those that are persecuted or mistreated in other parts of the world.
In India, untouchables have acid thrown in their face for looking at Brahmins. In Rwanda Hutu killed Tutsi just for being Tutsi. In Iran homosexuals are hanged until dead. In some muslim countries people are beheaded for preaching Christianity.
I carry shame for what happened in America’s past but I am immensely proud that America has changed many of its bad ways. I will actively pursue improving America, but I don’t’ approach it from the perspective that America is inherently evil. I pursue it from the perpsective that we have a special and generally good society that has areas to improve or change to make it better.
Obama said that Nazi philosophies were “uncomfortably similar” to things going on back home. Given that the U.S. government was allowing black men to not receive treatment for syphilis well after the Brown decision, I’d say that’s an uncomfortable similarity. Mirror image? No. Close similarity? Depends on your perspective? Uncomfortable? You bet your ass. I’m not comfortable with it. Is anyone?
DATADAVE,
The election of Obama could really eliminate all these comparisons…a strong supporter of Israel’s right to exist while being an African American (with a scotch irish background too) could just be the Moderating effect upon Misery Competition. No excuses, then, we’ll all be in the same boat although extreme income difference of various groups and a huge prison population of minorities and whites still needs to be addresses.
So, are you trying to say that…
1. I need to elect Obama because of some guilt I am supposed to harbor for our horrible past sins? Isn’t that kind of like Obama sayin’ that he was only 8 when Ayers bombed the Pentagon and Capital??
2. That you agree that it’s OK to take MY hard earned money, and give it to folks who you think deserve it, despite their inability or lack of desire to earn it?
3. That the folks in prison – irregardless of the fact that they were sentenced for crimes they commited on society, are there only because of their race?
Just askin….(sacasm – in case you didn’t get it…..)
but I don’t’ approach it from the perspective that America is inherently evil.
I don’t either. But it is not unpatriotic to point out “flaws” or imperfection. Loving something gives you the responsibility to point out when it’s fucked up.
I love my country, but sometimes that “bright shining light on a hill” has been a bonfire.
Slavery was wrong. A cursory knowledge of history shows that it was fellow Africans who sold them into it but why quibble.
The analogy of the Holocaust and slavery is not an apt one by any stretch. By 1939, slavery had been over for 70 years and the “genocide” against blacks was not quite a genocide at that point. Granted, there was still murders committed by the KKK (of which you have a former member in a prominent position in your party) but the tide was turning leading up to the GOP assiting LBJ in passing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Two acts that were overwhelmingly fought against by the Democrats.
There are still Holocaust survivors alive today whose families were systematically rounded up and exterminated. While the shame of slavery should never be forgotten, comparing it to the Holocaust and the hundreds of years of pogroms that preceded it is like comparing apples to roller blades.
You’re wrong here, Ollie. You only exascerbate your ignorance by continuing to stand by that wretched post you wrote. We all now it was an inane post with the sole goal of getting a link from LGF. Hope you enjoyed it as it not only got you hits but now thousands more know just how moronic you are.
I love my country, but sometimes that “bright shining light on a hill” has been a bonfire.
America-hating swine.
Because we all know Brown vs. The Board of Education was at heart really dealing with dismantling the the institutional structure which contributed to the deaths of so many on the Atlantic Triangle…
Let’s get back to the original point.
Obama compared America’s laws AT THE TIME OF Brown V. the Board of Education to the doctrines of Nazi Germany.
The very fact that segregation assumed that blacks would still be alive as they were segregated, and not a race from which America needed to be “cleansed” through genocide, shows how far out Obama is with this comparison.
Obama clearly does not approach America’s history from the perspective that this country is “inherently evil.” What is the whole speech that is quoted in the “Yes We Can” video about, except the capacity of Americans to do better than they had done before? What is the message of “Yes We Can” itself, if not the declaration of an optimist that things don’t have to stay the way they are?
I’m getting really sick of the misreading of Obama’s words that LGF and its readers have engaged in. Obama did not say that segregation = concentration camps. Rather, he pointed out that there were uncomfortable similarities in Nazis’ views of Jews as subhuman and similar views in the U.S. Indeed, if you bother to read some history, you’ll find that a great deal of the non-Supreme Court-driven stabs at desegregation were motivated by a concern that the Communists could make hay of racial inequality.
Read Richard Wright’s “Native Son” for a description of how Communists appealed to blacks by pointing out that capitalist democracy did not include them. (This is similar to the tactic used by Naxalites (Indian Marxists) among Dalits (”untouchables”) and tribal groups in India — point out that they’re getting screwed by the existing regime, so the solution is revolution — or more practically, the Naxalites’ solution seems to be terrorism, kidnappings, etc.) Kruschev and Castro staged a meeting in Harlem in September 1960 to emphasize that under communism, there wasn’t racial inequality.
People excluded from capitalistic opportunity and democratic participation are vulnerable targets for the thinking that the government under which they are living is irredeemably broken and needs to be replaced. Sadly, instead of recognizing that it was inequality driving minorities toward communist sympathies and working to reduce that inequality, McCarthy and his ilk decided that minority groups should be targeted for persecution. Again, if you believe there wasn’t widespread, institutional anti-Semitism in the U.S. after WWII, read up on HUAC’s special targeting of Jews as communists. The Jewish actor (who took a non-Jewish name, John Garfield) playing the Jewish friend in “Gentleman’s Agreement” was hounded to death by HUAC and the blacklist.
Scott, we’re not talking about slavery or the Holocaust, per se.
We’re talking about segregation as it existed in this country up until the sixties and segregation as it existed in Germany in the 1930’s.
Do try to keep up.
We all now it was an inane post with the sole goal of getting a link from LGF
Oh, yes indeed. We just love it when the short bus stops here.
Scott, for heaven’s sake, try to read the comments before you post a new one. Obama at no point equated segregation with concentration camps. I will send you a $50 check if you can point to the place in the transcript where he said, “Segregation was just as bad as the gas chambers,” or anything even close. Rather, he was pointing out that the ATTITUDE behind segregation — the dehumanization of racial minorities, the belief that they should not be mixed with the white majorities in schools, workplaces, public accommodations, or even families — is uncomfortably similar to the ATTITUDE behind Nazism. Anti-semitism is racism; white supremacy is racism. This is why Johnson sounds like he is defending segregation when he tries to claim that the attitude behind it was not racism, the same kind of sentiment that fueled anti-semitism. Or is just that Jews seem white enough to y’all now that anti-semitism ISN’T a form of racism?
Oliver Willis, from the comment thread in http://www.oliverwillis.com/2008/09/03/palins-speech-it-isnt-2004/:
“Sarah Palin is a Nazi. And so is the Republican party and the modern conservatives who control it and represent a majority of it’s membership. See, it’s not so hard. When the GOP stops acting like the Nazis, we’ll stop calling ‘em that. If the last two nights are any kind of evidence, that day ain’t coming soon.”
ed, daniel, that good enough for you?
“I dunno about anyone else, but I’m so looking forward to reading their election threads after McCain concedes.”
Wait….you mean he hasn’t conceded yet?
ed, daniel, that good enough for you?
I forget, what was the context?
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/10/among-the-palin.html
Was this the context?
Ah, I see we have a drooling Jonah Golberg “Liberal Fascism” fanboy in our new best friend Phil over here.
Rather than discuss the policy implementation and culpability of the US Government in the actual removal of the actual gonads of actual mentally handicapped people, Big Brain Phil would rather play a little game of trivial pursuit.
Phil – do you deny that the USA was cutting out the gonads of the mentally handicapped?
Do you deny that the US Supreme Court under Oliver Wendell Holmes authorized these atrocities in our country?
And according to the Wikipedia you sooooooo luuuv,
Hmmm… sterilization rates rose through 1942… I wonder what else was going on in 1942… I seem to remember there was something… oh yeah that whole “Second World War” thing!!! Doy! But wait, what did the traitorous villain Obama say again?
So, we were cutting handicapped gonads well into the midst of WW2? Imagine!
And sterilization laws weren’t fully repealed until 1974 which was, ummm… 20 YEARS AFTER Brown v. Board of Ed?! We were sterilizing people quite legally right through the time Brown was decided. But let’s not discuss that, noooooo… it’s more important to play Jonah Goldberg Trivial Pursuit! Whee!
And while Galton may have coined the word, let’s focus for a moment on IMPLEMENTATION, shall we, douchnozzle? What was the level of gonad removal in the saintly and noble USA versus the prefidious Britain? Well, according to the Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine,
Now I expect that Supergenius Phil will, in the best tradition of the Doughy Pantload, seize on the bit about “progressive races” and jump up and down shouting “A Ha! I got you now! It was those damn progressives again! I win! Neener Neener Neener!”
>Haplo9, criticizing people’s views is not dehumanizing.
Thank you Captain Obvious. The point is that when your “criticism” is equating someone with Nazi’s, you have moved past the point of a reasonable, useful criticism of someones position into the realm of intentionally attempting to inflame. Now, hey, if the people you are criticising are trying to commit genocide, then thats a pretty defensible comparison. But that isn’t true here. Sure, there were other aspects of Nazism that you might consider relevant, but you are either being intentionally dense or naive to think that bringing Nazis into a discussion doesn’t carry a whole lot of connotational baggage with it.
Let me put it this way – if your job was the hangman at the Nuremburg trials, would you feel any qualms about carrying out that job and taking the lives of the convicted Nazis? If not, then would you also not feel qualms about taking the lives of people who you compare to Nazis today? (I’d hope there would be a rather large difference.) Really, is it that hard to make your point without bringing in Nazis?
For what its worth, conservatives who equate lefties with figures like Stalin or Lenin have the same problem, IMO.
right wingers don’t do “context” … or “nuance”…
All this discussion can be obviated by one simple historical observation:
People were actually drawing these comparisons throughout WWII and, even more, throughout the Cold War. In addition to being a moral issue, civil rights was a propaganda issue. This is just a matter of historical fact.
Obama is simply, and accurately, pointing this out.
Haplo9,
Still can’t see the difference between even unreasonable, exaggerated, “inflammatory” criticism of someone’s political views, and the dehumanization involved in saying that someone’s sex, race, religion or sexual orientation should exclude her from full participation in our society?
I recently had someone tell me that because I had pointed out the difference in maternal versus paternal legal responsibility for a newborn, I must be indifferent to the treatment of children. That’s unreasonable, exaggerated, “inflammatory” criticism. But it’s not dehumanizing; it still recognizes me as the sociopolitical equal of the person making the criticism. Dehumanizing would be being excluded from military service for being female; excluded from political service for being Muslim; excluded from family formation for being homosexual. All of those are conservative preferences that say someone is not a sociopolitical equal.
The very fact that segregation assumed that blacks would still be alive as they were segregated, and not a race from which America needed to be “cleansed” through genocide, shows how far out Obama is with this comparison.
It also shows how far off your cognitive reading skills are. But thanks for stopping by.
Nazism was a lot more than just the holocaust, you twit. And if you’d bother to read what was actually said instead of pretending what you wish had been said, you’d see that Obama was comparing Nazism as a whole to segregation. You twit.
Obama is simply, and accurately, pointing this out.
He keeps doing that.
One last thing: if it’s so out of bounds to compare anything in American politics to Nazism, how do y’all explain the mailer the Pennsylvania GOP sent to Jewish voters telling them that they had to vote for McCain to prevent a second Holocaust?
LOL,
Ollie and the rest of the gang here are getting thier asses handed to them. You guys have a lot of critical feelings but not so many actual critical thoughts.
Johnny Simpson hits it right out of the park.
1. Barack Obama made the comparison that the Brown v. BOE era in America was not dissimilar to what went on in Nazi Germany. That is a stretch. Segregating people and exterminating them aren’t even in the same ballpark. Ain’t even the same f*ckin’ sport.
2. Charles Johnson took umbrage at the comparison, and rightly so. America is not the Third Reich, and never has been. Or a lot of you (and most likely I as well) would be in concentration camps or dead.
3. Defending America against a comparison to Hitler’s Germany does not by default stand as a justification for segregation.
4. Segregation sucked. We all know that. Charles Johnson knows it, too. It was, in fact, the federal government that struck down segregation laws and sent federal troops to enforce integration by fiat and by the gun.
5. To strongly disagree with Obama’s comparison of segregation-era America as like Nazi Germany is not by any stretch of the imagination approval of segregation, just as disagreeing with Obama or his policies does not make you a racist.
You’re reading way too much into it, Oliver.
The only question is, are you reading into Charles Johnson’s statements what you wish to see as opposed to what is really there, based on his politics and yours?
I would suggest Oliver, that your reach exceeds your grasp. Your intelligence is adequate but your education is quite suspect. Comic books aren’t literature after all.
One last thing: if it’s so out of bounds to compare anything in American politics to Nazism, how do y’all explain the mailer the Pennsylvania GOP sent to Jewish voters telling them that they had to vote for McCain to prevent a second Holocaust?
Oh, that, well…um….yeah.
1. Barack Obama made the comparison that the Brown v. BOE era in America was not dissimilar to what went on in Nazi Germany.
PRE-HOLOCAUST. Why don’t you get that?
That is a stretch. Segregating people and exterminating them aren’t even in the same ballpark. Ain’t even the same f*ckin’ sport.
Good thing that isn’t what he was saying.
The only question is, are you reading into Charles Johnson’s statements what you wish to see as opposed to what is really there, based on his politics and yours?
I could ask you the same thing. Are you reading into what Obama said statements you wish to see, based on your politics?
(I am reposting since this seems to not have been posted when I submitted it before, I am removing the direct web links since that seems to trigger some of the filters)
Ah, I see we have a drooling Jonah Golberg “Liberal Fascism” fanboy in our new best friend Phil over here.
Rather than discuss the policy implementation and culpability of the US Government in the actual removal of the actual gonads of actual mentally handicapped people, Big Brain Phil would rather play a little game of trivial pursuit.
Phil – do you deny that the USA was cutting out the gonads of the mentally handicapped?
Do you deny that the US Supreme Court under Oliver Wendell Holmes authorized these atrocities in our country?
And according to the Wikipedia you sooooooo luuuv,
Hmmm… sterilization rates rose through 1942… I wonder what else was going on in 1942… I seem to remember there was something… oh yeah that whole “Second World War” thing!!! Doy! But wait, what did the traitorous villain Obama say again?
So, we were cutting handicapped gonads well into the midst of WW2? Imagine!
And sterilization laws weren’t fully repealed until 1974 which was, ummm… 20 YEARS AFTER Brown v. Board of Ed?! We were sterilizing people quite legally right through the time Brown was decided. But let’s not discuss that, noooooo… it’s more important to play Jonah Goldberg Trivial Pursuit! Whee!
And while Galton may have coined the word, let’s focus for a moment on IMPLEMENTATION, shall we, douchnozzle? What was the level of gonad removal in the saintly and noble USA versus the prefidious Britain? Well, according to the Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine,
Now I expect that Supergenius Phil will, in the best tradition of the Doughy Pantload, seize on the bit about “progressive races” and jump up and down shouting “A Ha! I got you now! It was those damn progressives again! I win! Neener Neener Neener!”
Nazism
Fascist political ideology including both classically left and right wing policy positions, including though by no means limited to the following:
-Extreme Nationalism and anti-Bolshevism
-Militarism
-Racism and Discrimination
-Nativism/Belief in the natural supremacy of one’s own race
Look, I’m as sick of Nazi comparisons as anybody. But would one of you cons care to explain to me how any of the above doesn’t have an echo in the United States, circa mid-1950s?
And not how it’s not exactly the same. How it doesn’t have an echo.
Parth, I would say there were echos of some if not all of those as far back as 1914.
Segregating people and exterminating them aren’t even in the same ballpark. Ain’t even the same f*ckin’ sport.
Um, in Fascist Germany segregation was the warm-up before the game.
If those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it, what happens to those who won’t even acknowledge history in the first place?
They’re doomed to read LGF, I suppose.
AO’s defense of America rests on the premise that one instance of subjugation of an entire ethnic group–Jim Crow–was not as bad as another example–the Holocaust.
If anyone is oversimplifying here, AO, it’s not Oliver. When American troops entered WWII, the depth of the Reich’s depravity was largely unknown. The Holocaust was not yet understood and it was not Nazi Germany’s only crime. They also practiced discrimination against Jews in employment, education, and housing. They marginalized Jews as members of society and forced them into ghettos.
Any of this sounding familiar to you yet?
All the while, black American soldiers, asked to fight against Germany were routinely treated with less respect than German POWs.
If it makes you feel better to think that our crimes weren’t nearly as heinous as their crimes, go for it. It won’t change the fact that both societies perpetrated crimes against large numbers of people based on the supposed supremacy of the dominant race.
My favorite thing on this thread has to be how conservatives keep saying they know things USED to be wrong in the USA, but, “we as Americans” have corrected them.
My question is: who the fuck is this “WE” you guys keep talking about? Certainly not conservatives!
Conservatives have opposed EVERY positive change in this country since its inception, and championed every negative one. Pick an issue, from slavery/segregation to Prohibition to equal rights/voting rights for women and minorities to the progressive income tax, and conservatives are on the wrong side of history.
If it were up to conservatives, the world would still be flat and the Inquisition would still be going on. Fuck ‘em. They belong on history’s dustheap.
So I challenge these trolls: Name one positive change the conservative movement has accomplished. And don’t even try St Ronald won the Cold War all by his damnself.
Scott;
“…Slavery was wrong. A cursory knowledge of history shows that it was fellow Africans who sold them into it but why quibble.
The analogy of the Holocaust and slavery is not an apt one by any stretch…”
You’re right- The (National Socialist) Holocaust lasted 12 years, slavery lasted 246. And Jim Crow, which followed slavery (and featured the police brutality, murder, rape, housing discrimination and minimal pay associated w/ The Holocaust), persisted for another 100 years following emancipation. There is no comparison by any historic yardstick.
Parthenon, the things that you listed as characterizing Nazism are wholly unique to Nazism in that they were carried out by one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful army in the world. Note that I said “carried out”. Death camps killing jews, catholics, gypsies and the disabled were physically constructed, administered and maintained both inside native German territories and outside of Germany by the actual GERMAN MILITARY. This army had absolute power where they perpetrated the atrocities they did – no authority, military or other, stood in their way. The German nation, under Nazism, used what was essentially absolute power, unrestricted by either force or law, to commit genocide under the ideology of racism. Which yes, as others have said, was only part of their evils – but alas is the relevant part here.
Nowhere in the history of segregation in this country was the military used, by any party in control of the federal government, let alone to actually commit any acts of genocide, but more relevantly, to perpetrate or enforce the perpetration of the crimes committed by individual citizens and local goverments – primarily in the south. In fact, the federal government was engaged in a legal battle with the states to get them to STOP doing these things – all the while trying to maintain some bit of federalism. And then finally, when the federal government made these legal reforms, passed the civil rights act, fair housing act, and on and on, the MILITARY was actually sent to ENFORCE desegregation and help to guarantee the rights that the civil rights acts granted! DO YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE – PLEASE GOD…
In addition to all of that mess, southerners who enforced segregation surely were not nationalists! They were, in acedemic terms, state’s rights advocates! Note the quote from the film Mississippi Burning, coming from the local sherrif to the FBI agent, “well, you in Mississippi now, boy”. Those people, by and large, had nothing but ill will towards the federal government. Come on, know your history. This was only a couple of generations removed from the civil war and reconstruction. Trace Atkins wasn’t playing any concerts in Birmingham.
And yeah, most all of the enforcers of segregation were white supremicists. As were most white people in the country at that time. But the vast majority of the country was not officially segregated – and again, not to belabor the point, but nowhere were six million african americans systematically put to death. So I’m not sure where the white supremacy parallel comes into play at all.
People, it’s not enough to just throw out comparisons and then apply them on some sort of perverse deontological basis. You have to examine the consequences. Nations, territories, tribes, and individuals have been racist and otherwise hateful since the dawn of civilization. It’s the structure of the society that has either permitted destruction to arise from that hatred, or worked to eradicate the hatred. Please recognize and be thankful that republican or democrat controlled, our country has been the latter.
Wow, what a waste of everyone’s time and brain capacity.
Obama’s statement was a statement of historical fact. All through the 40s, 50s, and 60s, America’s ideological struggles with tyrannical governments were publicly contrasted with its domestic racial policies. No one has disputed that fact, as far as I can tell. Whether those comparisons were justified is really beside the point; they were made, and they influenced the public discourse, which is all Obama is saying.
It’s amazing how many words people can use to miss the point.
DO YOU SEE THE DIFFERENCE – PLEASE GOD…
I assume you’re one of Mr. Johnson’s regulars who routed over here after reading his post, as I don’t recall ever seeing you on OW’s forum. If that’s the case, welcome.
We judge these things by outcome, not process. If one liberal republic is born of a violent revolution and the other of a velvet revolution, are they not both liberal republics? The fact that the military was the hammer of choice for one group and the legislature/KKK/’soft’ discrimination (i.e. hire the guy named Tom instead of the guy named Tyrell) was the choice of another group is irrelevant, at least to me.
Echoes in outcome are echoes in outcome. Period. I will be the first to say that calling Bush a fascist or calling America a fascist state is absurd, but calling them ‘disturbingly close’ is not far-fetched at all, for anyone familiar with the early twentieth-century history of the United States. Now we’re all adults capable of making and understanding nuanced arguments, so I’m going to assume that nobody will take me saying it’s not a far-fetched comparison as ‘he said America is fascist.’ That I am not the opposition candidate for president probably improves my chances by at least an order of magnitude.
In addition to all of that mess, southerners who enforced segregation surely were not nationalists! They were, in acedemic terms, state’s rights advocates!
Which is a form of nationalism. Nationalism need not apply to the highest governmental jurisdiction in the land, just to ‘the state’ and the people who are like you against the people who are not like you. There was a southern ethos and mythology based upon the very real differences in ways of life that existed post-colonization and pre-reconstruction. People of those days tended to be ‘Virginians first’ or ‘New Yorkers first.’
Irony:
Native Americans, themselves victims of genocide, Black Americans, themselves victims of Jim Crown and grandchildren of slaves, and Japanese Americans- whose parents and siblings were rounded up and intetted during WW II, were drafted, trained, and deployed to fight Nazis.
Moreover, many volunteered.
Please recognize and be thankful that republican or democrat controlled, our country has been the latter.
And believe me, I am thankful I was born here instead of North Korea. Among many other wordly pleasures, I am allowed to point out the fact that our culture has carried and in some cases continues to carry echoes of fascistic behavior without fear of a midnight raid on my apartment.
and again, not to belabor the point, but nowhere were six million african americans systematically put to death.
You’re belaboring a point that was not made, sir.
It is not:
Segregation=Holocaust.
Nobody said that. That is a response to a point that was not made.
Um, wow. Watching people who think they know American legal history write about it … kind of scary.
1789 – Our Constitution said, “The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight.” To translate for the historically impaired, the Constitution said Congress could not end the slave trade before 1808.
Also, “No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.” In other words, if a slave made it from one of the “unAmerican” southern states to the “real American” northern states, it didn’t matter if the northern state forbade slavery; if the slave’s owner filed a claim for the slave to be returned, the slave had to be returned. That’s the Constitution.
The vaunted federal government passed multiple laws to reinforce this provision of the Constitution. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 made it a federal crime to assist an escaping slave. The better-known Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 made any Federal marshal or other official who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave liable to a fine of $1,000; any person aiding a runaway slave by providing food or shelter was subject to six months’ imprisonment and a $1,000 fine.
Under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, federal officials included military officers. Not until March 13, 1862, did Lincoln give the order that Union Army officers were forbidden to return fugitive slaves.
Now, some of you may protest that this was slavery, which had no connection at all to segregation, just like the genocide phase of Nazism was unconnected to the prior discrimination and ghettoization of Jews. But we’re in fundamental disagreement on that point, so perhaps there’s no use in further discussing it.
Segregation was how blacks were kept as second class citizens once the 14th Amendment established that they WERE citizens in the first place and the 13th Amendment forbade any more de jure slavery. The concentration camps were just the Final Solution to the “Jewish problem” with which the Nazis had been grappling for years. The attitude behind slavery and segregation, Star of David armbands and Auschwitz is the same: These People Are Not Fully Human, Not Fully Citizens, and We Will Do What We Like With Them.
Nowhere in the history of segregation in this country was the military used, by any party in control of the federal government, let alone to actually commit any acts of genocide,
Trail. Of. Tears.
Plus, what PG said.
But the vast majority of the country was not officially segregated
The dismissal of racism as a “southern problem” is something that I, having grown up and gone to college in the South, find very tiresome. In 1849, the Mass. Supreme Court upheld segregation in Boston schools. In 1936, Maryland still forbade blacks to attend its state law school, and had zoned residential housing by race. In 1950, Oklahoma forbade blacks to attend graduate school with whites. It was Brown v. Board of Education of TOPEKA KANSAS. Delaware and Washington D.C. also were part of the school desegregation cases. Even as of 1949 (post WWII), 30 states banned interracial marriage. That number doesn’t include California, which had a state supreme court case that deemed the state’s anti-miscegenation statute to violate the federal Constitution. Legalized racism was not just a southern problem; it was an American problem.
Parthenon, I think you’re giving Chuckles’ audience too much credit if you think everyone can grasp larger, more nuanced arguments. Introspection, due diligence, historical context and nuance are practically as antithetical to them as is the water pistol to my cat.
What PG said re-Kansas and Delaware and the Brown case. Also note that the housing discrimination case upon which “A Raisin in the Sun” was based took place in Illinois (AKA “Land of Lincoln”). And national fraternities, unions, and professional associations were officially segregated.
Not only that, when he was grazed by a rock during an open housing march in Chicago’s Gage Park in 1966, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said he had witnessed bigotry in the South, but the slurs and invective (not to mention projectiles)hurled during the demonstration surpassed anything he’d experienced in Dixie.
Don’t kid yourself. (Google “Boston school desegregation 1974″, or “Louise Day Hicks”).
Really, what’s the sense of arguing with these guys? (Although it sure is fun seeing PG, fafaroo, et al open up giant cans of whoopass on these LGF types.)
They’ve read an explanation of US history by Mark Steyn or some graduate of Regency University published by Regnery Press and have become experts.
Bijan, Parthenon, props to you guys too.
It seems to me that this entire discussion has missed the point. The title of this article that states Mr. Johnson is somehow defending segregation. I’ve read the article. It in no way offers any apologetics for the policy of Segregation. The fact that he may be mistaken about Obama’s comparison between Nazi Germany and US policy during the ’50s seems tangential to Mr. Willis’ accusation.
In this case Mr. Willis is wrong.
Parthenon, the things that you listed as characterizing Nazism are wholly unique to Nazism in that they were carried out by one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful army in the world.
I’m gonna say this one more time. Please….PLEASE… pay attention.
We
Are
Talking
About
BEFORE ALL THAT!
BEFORE the German Army dominated Europe, back when the German Army was using sticks instead of rifles for drilling. Back when Germany was still trying to apologize for WW I. Back when they were forbidden to have a standing army they could still demonize and dehumanize Jews, gypsys, Catholics, teh gay (sound familiar?) and anyone else “other” and blame them for the depression. If they had only had Muslims and Mexicans…
Obama, if properly attributed here, is correct that anti-black segregation and elimination of the Jews had a common thread: they are both Right Wing movements. Liberalism is opposed to either…but Charles Johnson is of the Right so he can’t be too antiSegregationist, esp. since his party is actively engaging in voter suppression of the African-American community, and also, university students. Republicans hate “new” voters.
Bruce Henry said:
“Conservatives have opposed EVERY positive change in this country since its inception, and championed every negative one. Pick an issue, from slavery/segregation to Prohibition to equal rights/voting rights for women and minorities to the progressive income tax, and conservatives are on the wrong side of history.”
Bruce Henry = Carlatan to the nth degree.
It was the Republican Party that was created to end slavery, the Democrats elected Jefferson Davis as president…OF THE SOUTH.
When Lincoln was killed by a DEMOCRAT (Booth), Andrew Johnson a “War Democrat” (VP at the time, replaced him.
The victors were the REPUBLICANS: We beat the DEMOCRATS, ended slavery. When REPUBLICANS passed legislature to improve the lives of the newly freed slaves, Andrew Johnson (D), vetoed every measure. So, Congress IMPEACHED him.
Martin Luther King was a REPUBLICAN.
The Civil Rights Bills passed were by a REPUBLICAN Congress and Senate.
Who passed Legislation in the 80’s and in the last eight years to kill progressive tax? Yup, you got it: REPUBLICANS. And both times it was to replace the Democrats Tax Increase. But you probably would not know anything thing about taxes since you still sponge of mom and live in her basement. BTW: Tax revenue INCREASES when rates are lower.
Bottom Line: A wise person said above about people who do not remember the past…you guys have flunked in a major way.
But that is okay, Team Barry and D’Oh Biden will cure all.
Segragation did not work, doesn’t work now, and never will. Forcing people to coexist because of their color, creed, culture is a truly deflating force in our society. So is intentionally propping someone up, who is not ready for the job.
Wow, have any of you picked up a book and read about Nazi Germany? Seen any movies? Heard any stories?
Comparing the holocaust and the horrors of WWII to ANYTHING the US has done deliberately or by unintended consequences demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge of history and a moral bankruptcy that is hard to imagine.
But then, one doesn’t have to wonder… just read the morally ambiguous comments here, and you walk away thinking, yeah, there are a lot of really ignorant people walking around believing anything they’re told.
This country has done shameful things in the past, no doubt about that. It’s also the country people are dying to get to. Ever wonder why?
Maybe the haters should not forget that part of our story.
Wake up folks.
Pleazzze, Can’t these Cons get their history straight.
The Republican party wasn’t a Right wing party in the middle 1800s…neither party was left nor right. Republicans tended to be more ‘progressive’, against ethnic divisions and for more education of children….eh, that’s not the modern Republican. Abe Lincoln, if modern, would be somewhat similar to Obama in political stances.
Dude, my ma and pa were Republicans back in the day…they switched to Democrats when Nixon et al turned the Repug party into that of the stars and bars aka “southern strategy”.
Way to go. You took the Scum out of the Democratic Party and left the populist and democratic party intact and now you own the scum that used to be in the Democratic party. Thus, people are starting to see Lincoln’s words in the modern Repug party: “You can fool the people some of the time (Reagan sure did) but you can’t fool the people all of the time (Bush/McCain/Palin).
I think much of the arguments stem from a lack of specification on which Nazi period Obama was referring to, as there were early racist and late genocidal. It would be hard to imagine Obama calling the segregationist South genocide which is what many people would infer with the reference to Nazi Germany. I think it was just not the best comparison for him to make.
Very good reading all. It was entertaining to see everyone’s reasoning. And don’t celebrate that Obama victory too early. This is going to be another very close election.
jdubya (and what an apt appellation) –
Would you care to point out in what instance Bruce claimed that ‘Republicans have opposed EVERY positive change in this country since its inception, and championed every negative one.’?
No? Maybe because that’s not what he effing said?? He said “Conservatives have opposed EVERY positive change in this country since its inception, and championed every negative one.” Conservatives, not Republicans. Which I defy you to refute.
conservatism = .change by its very definition. CONS OPPOSE CHANGE. Which is what we see today in the modern Republican Party.
jdubya wrote:
“…The Civil Rights Bills passed were by a REPUBLICAN Congress and Senate…”
Not so much. The House and Senate were overwhelmingly Democrat in LBJ’s day.
As for MLK, the only presidential candidate he publicly endorsed was JFK, who ran vs. Nixon. He supported men- not parties (as demonstrated by his 1967-68 challenge of LBJ’s Viet Nam budget and strategies).
At the risk of this becoming a hijack, Jdubya has mangled his history beyond the point where I can sit still and take it.
It ought to be noted that pre-industrialization, the Federalist-later-Whig-party and even later-Republicans were actually more progressive and change-oriented for being champions of economic development and modernization, and of course the whole anti-slavery (often – but by no means always – because slavery was not conducive to an industrial work force) thing. The Jefferson-Andrew Jackson-Andrew Johnson Democratic Party model had very little in common with the modern incarnation. They railed against elitists, they professed to share a kinship with the little guy (or yeoman farmer, in yesterday’s parlance), and they were for the most part supported the states over the Federal government, which they favored keeping small and subservient to the state versions.
But, Jdubya, if you’d rather continue trading in grossly oversimplified generalizations, feel free. But if you were trying to answer Bruce’s question, you missed by a mile.
Why is it the only LGF guy I could get to fuck with me is such an obvious idiot? I guess, as a “Carlatan to the nth degree” that’s all I deserve.
Jdubya thinks that conservatives have ALWAYS been the Republicans and liberals have ALWAYS been the Dems.
Let me guess, jdubya….homeschooled? Or did you go to the local all-white “Christian Academy?”
Bonus question: Did little George Washington REALLY chop down the cherry tree?
Jdubya: “Martin Luther King was a REPUBLICAN.”
You are a lying ignoramus who, unlike me, lives in your mom’s basement (project much?).I’m a 54 year old Southern white guy, married, with two daughters and a good job.
I lived through, and was paying attention during, the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Did you?
Martin Luther King, the greatest American of the 20th Century,and my greatest hero, was So Fucking Far from a Bush Republican it cannot be compared.
Whoa, I’m starting to go off. Fuck this idiot. I gotta watch my blood pressure.
So is intentionally propping someone up, who is not ready for the job.
Hey, don’t look at us. You guys picked McCain and Palin.
God, how I can’t wait for an Obama administration. The joy I will feel when all the corrupt, law-breaking, lying white thieves are repaid for all the sins they committed against people of color in this country can’t be put into words. Charles and all of his muslim-hating racist bigots being at the mercy of a black man that will FORCE those white pigs to pay their fair share warms my heart. Obama/Biden ‘08! Get ready white pigs, your day is coming.
In fairness to jdubya, a niece of MLK’s has made her name on the right by falsely claiming that MLK was a Republican and opposed to reproductive choice. In fact, MLK received Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger award and deputized his wife to deliver a speech that concluded, “The Negro constitutes half the poor of the nation. Like all poor, Negro and white, they have many unwanted children. This is a cruel evil they urgently need to control. There is scarcely anything more tragic in human life than a child who is not wanted. That which should be a blessing becomes a curse for parent and child. There is nothing inherent in the Negro mentality which creates this condition. Their poverty causes it.”
They also say MLK would have opposed Affirmative Action, when it was practically his idea to begin with.
I read what Little Green Footballs wrote and I haven’t seen that much juggling of nonsense since I don’t know when. He tries to play the game of exact interpretation but it only makes him look false.
The climate of the country during Brown vs. Board of Education can be compared to that of Nazi Germany. If Mr. Johnson doesn’t think so, then maybe he should have a conversation with those who had to deal with the situation during that time. Or the relatives of those lynched and maimed during that time.
But that would require doing something other than watching the folks on Fox News talk down to black people (that is unless they invite someone like Jesse Lee Peterson or Star Parker willing to earn that right wing think tank money)
This has been the funniest ever. The lack of historical knowledge or perspective has seldom been as well illustrated here as on this thread.
LOL, The Basement Quaker rises to the occasion.
“AO’s defense of America rests on the premise that one instance of subjugation of an entire ethnic group–Jim Crow–was not as bad as another example–the Holocaust.”
You are saying it is the same? I realize you hate your country but even so, I would have thought you had at least some grasp of the concepts here. I wasn’t defending America, she hasn’t needed a defense. Slavery has existed on this planet for thousands of years right up to this very present day. We got rid of slavery and paid a high price to do it.
No Quaker, Jim Crow wasn’t as bad as the Holocaust. Not even close.
AO,
Really, what’s been the lack of historical knowledge? “Perspective” of course is debatable, but historical facts are less so. Kindly point out which historical fact has been misstated.
For every stupid fucking idiot moron in these threads who has blown a gasket over Obama comparing American segregation to Nazi Germany, please explain to me why it is, on the other hand, perfectly acceptable to compare a potential NOT EVEN FUCKING HAPPENED YET Obama presidency to Nazi Germany:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31747_Obamas_Civilian_National_Security_Force/comments/#ctop
Jesus. You’re all just children. Sad, little, unloved children.
Here’s a classic comment from the bottom of that bottomless pit of a comment thread:
Let the paranoid, self-victimization ring!
For some reason I’ve been reading through that thread and I am struck by how much the LGFers are ready to see themselves as victims of a fascist Obama presidency.
Dig this morong:
A fellow once told me (a Black man, if it matters) that every serious problem he had had been visited upon him by people wearing suits and ties or uniforms of some kind.
I’m feeling that fellow.
Ok. Now if the big crime that Obama committed was making too strong a comparison to make a point about American segregation, surely it’s the same thing to predict, predict mind you!!!, that being a conservative under Obama will comparable to being black in the segregated South. I mean WTF you morons!!!
oh, and morong = moran
I simply can’t stay away from the mental car wreck that is the horrific 700 plus comment pile up at that LGF post. Here’s one more:
Yup. It’s scary alright. But not how this idiot means.
Creating an American version of the Nazi SS is EXACTLY what Obama wants to do? Seriously?
You LGF dipshits and the regular trolls here want to defend this shit?
But how can you exactly without also repudiating everything you’ve just said criticizing Obama for his comparison? Hell, at least Obama was referring to things that actually happened and weren’t just figments of his paranoid imagination.
“…it simply pointed out that Sen. Obama, like many left-wing folk, compared this county to Nazi Germany, more proof of his FAR left ideology, which I see as dangerous for this great Nation.”
Let me ask you something, Stonemason. The LGFers on the other thread are comparing an Obama presidency and those who vote for it and support it to Nazis and Nazi Germany — and Obama hasn’t even been elected yet.
What, in your mind, is that proof of?
And more from the comments:
I mean, here we have a guy stoking all manner of racial fear and hatred while challenging others to act violently in their own defense, all while telling us that it’s Obama who is just like Hitler.
Awesome.
Here’s a guy who has his history down cold:
Someone want to remind us all when Israel was founded?
2. Charles Johnson took umbrage at the comparison, and rightly so. America is not the Third Reich, and never has been.
But according to Charles Johnson and his idiot readers it will be!!!! OMG!!!
Of course we must all take into account Dr. Cruel’s remarkable treatise on the obvious:
DrCruel advises us:
And please do remind Charles, as well that comparing the events of 1930s Germany to 2008 America are apt to yield similarly distorted and politically suspect results. Unless, of course, you want to argue that America electing a black man president would so rip the very fabric of space and time that comparing Obama to Hitler is actually a-okay. That would make perfect sense.
Oh and Haplo, no doubt we’ll be seeing you repost this at LGF:
Please let us know when you’ve done that. We’ll all be so proud.
I am so going to hate myself in the morning …
Wow, Fafaroo ftw.
Please do not refer to Johnson of LGF as a “conservative.” I don’t know what he is, but he ain’t conservative.
For the past year or two, he has been banning actual conservatives from his site.
In the past few months, he has been banning social conservatives and Christians whose only fault was to speak up and disagree with him about Darwinism and Evolution.
People who know Johnson say he used to be a liberal, but after 9/11, he became a neo-conservative regarding national defense and the war on terror.
But he supports homosexuality and abortion on demand – he’s not a true conservative.
He’s also been on a strange path lately, what with accusing former online friends, such as Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch of being Neo-Nazis, etc.
Johnson has apparently had a mental breakdown or something, I don’t know.
I’m a conservative, and I don’t visit his blog hardly at all anymore, unless someone at another one says, “You just have to go look at such and such a post at LGF.” Other than that, I stay away from LGF.
Around 7:00 pm today, I made a post here, and I got a message saying it was awaiting ‘moderator approval,’ but it’s not showing up, and it’s now 11:45 pm. How long does it take for a post to be approved at this blog?