Inside Higher Ed has a story about controversy surrounding what strikes me as a curious book, The Third Reich and the Ivory Tower. I only glanced at the book, but according to the story, the book documents the fact that American universities maintained cordial ties with German universities and in some cases the German government until Kristallnacht in 1938.
What I find curious about this book is that while Germany from 1933 through 1938 treated Jews very badly, it wasn't until Kristallnacht that one could say that Germany was more vicious in its treatment of minorities than, say, Mississippi. American universities certainly weren't boycotting Mississippi, so it strikes me as an obvious issue of hindsight bias to argue that American universities that were exceedingly tolerant of domestic racism should be specifically excoriated for paying little attention to foreign anti-Semitism, just because in historical retrospect we know that German anti-Semitism led to the Holocaust. Not to mention that universities have generally (and usually properly) tried to stay out of political causes, absent extreme circumstances.
Of course, to the extent individuals in universities were sympathetic to the Nazis and their aims, and the book apparently discusses such individuals, they deserve individual condemnation, as do the likely much greater number of Stalinists who populated American academia. But substitute Communist for Nazi and Russian for German in the following sentence, and you will likely accused of promoting McCarthyism and anti-Communist hysteria, even though Stalin had killed far (far!) more people by 1938 than had Hitler: "but what is most alarming about the case is the administration's indifference to having an all-[Communist] [Russian] department at NJC, and the Rutgers' trustees' obvious hostility to committed opponents of [Communism]."
According to IHE, the author "criticizes American Catholic universities for keeping up friendly relations with Benito Mussolini's Fascist government, and also for their support of the Fascist General Francisco Franco in Spain." So universities are never supposed to have any relationships with dictatorships? Shall we cancel the visas of the thousands of Chinese students currently in the U.S.? What should we do about the many Latin American Studies professors, indeed populating entire departments, who are favorably inclined toward Castro? (BTW, given that the Spanish Republicans murdered around 7,000 priests and nuns, it's not surprising that Catholic universities, run by priests, preferred Franco.)
So, to sum up, I think (1) it's a curious feature of the U.S. that we like to focus on how Americans dealt with evil foreigners while we are much more reluctant to discuss how dealt with our own evils; (2) Nazi Germany had proven itself quite evil before 1938, but few people, including even many Nazis, anticipated what was to come, and it's unfair to treat people's reactions to Nazi Germany circa 1935 as if it they knew what Nazi Germany was going to be doing circa 1943--there's a big difference between various forms of official anti-Semitic harassment (though that was bad enough), which many, including many German Jews, thought or hoped was a passing phase as the Nazis consolidated power, and genocide. Fascist Italy and Franco's Spain were rather unremarkable dictatorships, and to argue that universities should have cut ties with them would mean that universities should cut ties with any dictatorship; and (3) it remains true that in most intellectual circles, even a whiff of cooperation with the Nazis identifies one as a bad person, but overt Stalinists are not only forgiven but often celebrated. (See, e.g., Paul Robeson, I.F. Stone, the Hollywood Ten. Bard College still has a professorship named for Stalinist Soviet spy Alger Hiss!)
What was that line from one of the Founders (Jefferson?) about the priest always being willing to bless the tyrant's regime in return for the preservation of his church's privileges?
Now, as for (3), the point has often been made that Nazism was up-front repugnant (at least to non-racists), whereas Communism at least was marketing something that had appeal. The truth was different, but the Soviets went to some effort to conceal the truth -- contrast the purges and show trials with Hitler's simply murdering his rivals in June 1934. So it's not really paradoxical that supporters of the Soviets get off more lightly.
Anne Applebaum, not someone normally considered to have a rosy view of Stalin's regime, recognizes the well-meaning nature of many of the Americans who supported the Soviets (and spied for them!) in the 1930s and 40s. Imperfect socialism seemed at least to hold out some hope for a socialist future.
(And lumping in I.F. Stone as a "Stalinist" is a tad glib; even Applebaum concedes that the case is rather more complex: "between 1936 and 1938 he still believed that only Stalin could save Europe from fascism." Was he wrong? Who did save Europe from fascism? Because I seem to recall it was the Red Army.)
But his government gave refuge to thousands of Jews during World War II fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe. He was not a Nazi.
Catholic universities can't be faulted for preferring Franco to the regime he deposed.
(Of course, "escaping goblins to be caught by wolves," as Bilbo Baggins says.)
Now, the academic pinks longterm cuddling with the reds, over a span of some decades, might be suspect, as mentioned.
If the author's point is that there were jewbaiters in academia at this time... hey... get in line, buddy.
This is a bit of an oversimplification. The hostility of the Catholic Church to the Republican movement antecedes the atrocities of the Civil War. Indeed, without defending the killings, the left had good reason for its intense hostility to the Catholic Church, which was a major bastion of reaction. (The Spanish Inquisition didn't come to an end until the beginning of the 19th century, when Napoleon shut it down.)
Wow.
A cuddling that has gone on unabated into the present, as academia's infatuation with Che, Fidel, Hugo, Daniel, et al, illustrates.
I don't know about the 1930s, but there are plenty of individuals and entire departments today who are eager to discuss the U.S.'s various evils.
(1) Stone was not a "Stalinst" after that;
(2) Anderson makes an important point in distinguishing between the Nazis/fascists, whose PR was on-the-surface hateful and awful, and the communists, who at least talked a good game (and in the U.S. actually sometimes did some good work) on issues like civil rights and labor (I know David B. doesn't think building unions was a good idea, but many other reasonable folks disagree);
(3) Along those lines, David, who do you think the "well meaning fascists" were in the U.S.? Of course there were fascist and Nazi sympathizers here, but it seems a lot harder to make the case that they were well-intentioned dupes than it is to make the same case for people in the CP before the Hitler-Stalin pact or at least before the end of WWII.
another chapter focuses on the all-female Seven Sisters Colleges -- which, despite Nazi-era quotas limiting women's enrollment at German universities, staunchly promoted the Junior Year in Munich up until the start of the war. (“In September 1939,” Norwood writes, “with war looming, a ‘dauntless group’ of juniors assembled in New York City eager to sail to Europe for a year of study at the University of Munich; it was prevented from doing so only by the outbreak of hostilities.”)....
Another chapter throws an unflattering spotlight on the University of Virginia's Institute of Public Affairs' roundtables, which, from 1933 to 1941, "provided a major platform and an aura of academic legitimacy for Nazi Germany's supporters and for the propagation of antisemitism," Norwood argues. Charged with presenting "both sides of questions," Virginia's administration worked closely with Nazi Germany's embassy in Washington to find speakers, and, Norwood writes, they "accorded great respect to the Nazi spokespersons, some of whom the U.S. government later arrested as seditionists, as unregistered German agents, or for disseminating Nazi propaganda."
Also, while this post does make some reasonable points, I don't think it's fair to criticize Norwood for failing to write about about Stalinism, racism, etc. If the standard is that you can't write about any evil without covering them all then not many is going to be written about.
"I.F. Stone was a Stalinist after the Pact?"
Yes. Look at his 1952 book, The Hidden History of the Korean War. In his book Stone argued that Syngman Rhee and the US caused the war. He also accused the US of war crimes there. Straight up Communist propaganda. Kim and Mao planned the war with Stalin's permission and material help. See the recent book Mao, which has two chapters devoted to the Korean War, or Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War. We now have almost the full story from documents released from China and Russia. What actually happened is so far from Stone's narrative, it seems reasonable to assume from this and his other activities that he was certainly sympathetic to Stalin before, during and after the Pact.
Mussolini was quite popular in the U.S. before he invaded Ethiopia. Supposedly, one of the lines in the original version of Cole Porter's "You're the Top" was "you're Mussolini."
"I'm not going to defend anyone who was in the American Communist Party after the Hitler-Stalin pact ..."
You shouldn't defend people who were members of CPUSA before the Hitler-Stalin Pact either. The nature of Soviet Communism was evident well before 1939 for anyone who bothered to look. We had the terror-famine in the Ukraine, and the Moscow show trials to name but two of many events. CPUSA head Browder supported the trials. See Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism. While the New York Times covered for Stalin by suppressing news of the terror famine, other Us newspapers carried the story.
They had to flee in 1933, that's when all the Jews lost there academic positions.
I would hope that this book also discusses the 1933 programs like "The Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars" (which unfortunately was only able to place 355 scholars out of 6000 applicants, over twelve years) and the New School's "University in Exile."
I don't think there's a consensus definition of "Stalinist." Thus, you could probably define it so strictly that I.F. Stone wasn't. But for the purposes of comparing the "overt Stalinists" of the original post with the level of "overt Nazi supporters" that would not be tolerated, this quote from Stone's article after Stalin's death (from http://www.reason.com/blog/show/133377.html) seems to suffice. "The cold war claque was critical of Nehru for calling Stalin a man of peace, but Washington's own instinctive reactions said the same thing...Stalin was one of the giant figures of our time, and will rank with Ivan, Peter, Catherine and Lenin among the builders of that huge edifice which is Russia. Magnanimous salute was called for on such an occasion...It is difficult to pursue dignified and rational policy when official propaganda has built up so distorted a picture of Russia. Many Americans fed constantly on the notion that the Soviet Union is a vast slave labor camp must have wondered why the masses did not rise now that the oppressor had vanished."
If Hitler had escaped his bunker and then died in 1953, and someone had then written such an obituary for him, I'd say that the obituary showed the author remained an overt Nazi supporter as of 1953. (We don't say "Hitlerist," so I've paraphrased "overt Stalinist" as "overt supporter of Stalin and his Communist regime" in order to make a parallel to "overt Nazi supporters".)
"Man of peace," in particular, seems absurdly, inanely Stalinist. A merely partisan Stalinist obituary writer might avoid mentioning Stalin joining (by treaty before, during, and until betrayal afterwards; and by military action late during) the invasion of Poland which set the world afire. And, for that matter, might avoid mentioning less famous stunts like annexing the Baltics. But to go beyond errors of omission, to bring in "man of peace" and argue for it, is ridiculous. It's not just preaching to the choir, it's writing pornography for people who derive satisfaction from degrading perverted intellectual and ethical acts.
I'm thinking this was the plan all along.
J'accuse, Bernstein!
In it, editor Edward Price Bell, "Dean of the Foreign Staff of the Chicago Daily News" describes Mussolini:
Other than the obvious snark from hindsight, I'm not really sure what to make of it. I have no idea what the Chicago Daily News was, nor who Edward Price Bell was. On the one hand, 1925 (when the interview was written up) was well before 1933 or 1939. On the other hand, clearly some people already were "calling him dictator".
I would not assume their motives were pure but I am trying hard to think of any American Nazis or Fascists who have even that much to claim to their credit from those years.
My father, anticommunist and antifascist, once told me that it was not easy to decide, during the 1930s, whom to back. Especially (though he did not say so) if your livelihood had been destroyed by capitalism (as his father's had been).
You will never convince the hard core Stone supporters. If we come up with a letter to Stone signed personally by Stalin, they will call it a forgery. If we get 10 document experts to authenticate it, they will find an 11th who (having never seen it) will express some kind of flimsy doubt-- "I don't think they had blue-black ink at that time." Then bingo, all other evidence, no matter how strong, instantly evaporates. If we find a photo of Stalin and Stone having sex, they will heap praise on them for their progressive attitudes towards homosexuality. This is what we are dealing with.
The Republican Party argued that Dean Acheson caused it. That doesn't make them Stalinists.
The evidence I've seen indicates that Stalin had little to do with it. Thus, even if Stone did accuse the US of causing the war, that wouldn't make him a Stalinist (it might make him a Maoist, I suppose).
Is there a cite or a link for the quotation? I checked Reason, but they didn't give one.
I'm not sure Stone's obituary is quite as complimentary as you (and Reason) think. I know I personally don't want mine to compare me to Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, or Lenin. And as for Catherine, well I did not have sex with that horse.
While the phrase "man of peace" grates, it's basically true from an international perspective (far from it internally, of course). Stalin pretty much WAS relatively cautious in his approach to international affairs (key word "relatively"). Had Trotsky been in charge, I suspect Russia would have been much more aggressive internationally.
While Stone should certainly be embarrassed by that obit, and while the passage does squint in the direction of Stalinism, I'd hesitate to make that judgment on this passage alone; other evidence seems to indicate that he had little use for Stalin after the M-R Pact.
IIRC, Mussolini and the allies fell out over the Spanish Civil War.
I don't think we know any such thing, any more than we 'know' that German anti-Rom, anti-homosexual, anti-Slav and so forth prejudices led to the Holocaust. They were vectors of the Holocaust (along with anti-Semitism, of course) but the Holocaust itself arose out of the German government's unconstrained power to use force in the name of 'good'.
It's a curious fact that many who condemn Holocaust revisionism are themselves defending a version of the Holocaust that the five million non-Jewish victims have largely been written out of. Misrepresenting the Holocaust as simply anti-Semitism writ large has long been a defense mechanism for those who want government to be unconstrained in doing 'good', and who need to hide from themselves how badly that can work out, but there's no need to encourage them.
A point well taken, and illustrative of a significant revisionism in making the Holocaust one of the causes for fighting World War II. The term Holocaust does not appear until the early 1950s. There were no policy statements by U.S. or Britain that the treatment of the Jews in Germany was a reason to “free Europe.”The entire war in the Pacific was free of any anti-Semitic issue, and it only rated cursory comments by Churchill, Roosevelt or Eisenhower relative to the war in Europe.
"The Republican Party argued that Dean Acheson caused it. That doesn't make them Stalinists."
They were arguing that Acheson was negligent. That's far different from saying that aggression on the part of SK and the US caused the war.
"The evidence I've seen indicates that Stalin had little to do with it."
Then you need to consult more modern works such as the ones I referenced. Stalin gave Kim permission for the invasion. Stalin provided material support to NK and China. Indeed Mao wanted Stalin's help in creating a Chinese war industry, and he got it. That's why Mao lobbied Stalin to give permission to Kim for the invasion. But even you don't even need the documents released in the early 1990s to know Stalin helped. There were Soviet MIGS with Russian pilots engaging the US in air combat over Korea. This History Channel has been running dog fight programs for years with this information.
Man, you are really, really, REALLY reaching, here.
FYI, some speculate that Stalin was offed precisely because he was not a man of peace, and his fellow commies murdered him rather than watch him destroy their country.
No, the mass butcher who conspired with Hitler to carve up Europe was not a "man of peace", in an "international perspective", or any other.
Yes, he gave the final go ahead for the Korean War, and supplied throughout.
Better to stick to the Stone apologia.
Well, he wasn't Gandhi, but he wasn't Hitler either. Stalin was cautious in his foreign policy, aggressive only when it was perfectly safe (e.g., Finland, Poland). There was no agreement with Hitler to carve up Europe, "just" Poland.
Zarkov to the contrary, Stalin resisted military action in Korea until Kim and Mao essentially said they were going to do it anyway. After that, he certainly did help (though not as much as the Koreans wanted). He carefully avoided any possible confrontation with the US, in stark contrast to Mao.
Look, I'm not a Communist, never was, and don't have any sympathy for them. What I do have is a commitment to historical accuracy no matter where that leads and no matter whose ideological ox is gored. If you guys on the Right are so blinded that you can't get even a fairly simple analysis of historical facts from 50 years ago, you're never going to get things right today.
Then again, duh.
"It was Communists who, eg, defended the Scottsboro Boys, when, to take another group at random, the Democrats didn't."
Do you think CPUSA defended the Scottsboro Boys out of some love for due process? If they were so enamored of fair trials, then why did they support the Moscow Show Trials?
"My father, anticommunist and antifascist, ..."
But not anti-socialist?
"Especially (though he did not say so) if your livelihood had been destroyed by capitalism (as his father's had been)."
This sentence makes "capitalism" seem like a person or an entity with a volition that targeted your grandfather. People fail at businesses or jobs all the time. Life is like that-- we get no guarantees. Look at the successful Ukrainian farmers who got labeled at "Kulaks." Can we blame socialism or communism for that?
An unworthy and obtuse remark, professor. Republicans attending NIRA rallies were not beaten up by New Deal goons, which is more than can be said about liberals at Bund rallies.
Or are we now going to descend to a discussion of whether FDR was an active agent of the Kremlin or a mere dupe?
* * *
From George L. Mosse, 'Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars':
'Nor was racism (of the German radical right) a weapon directed solely against blacks or Jews -- but an ideology as fully formed as liberalism, conservatism or socialism, standing on its own feet with its own positive appeal. Seeing only the negative aspects of such movements is to greatly underestimate their force, a mistake common before and after the Nazis' seizure of power. Instead, we must regard the political right as based in large part on an interplay between the brutality encouraged by the war, with its aggressive camaraderie and manliness, and the ideals which seemed gto promise a better future for all Germans.'
* * *
The Chicago Daily News was one of the handful of American newspapers with a large corps of foreign correspondents. One was E.A. Mowrer, the first, clearest and strongest American voice warning about the evil in Hitler ('Germany Puts the Clock Back,' 1933).
He was the first, or one of the first, American reporters to be thrown out of Germany after the Nazi takeover.
***slight threadjack***
I'm looking for a good book or two on European Jewish history, with particular emphasis on pogroms from the Middle Ages and onward to the rise of the Nazis. Anyone who could offer a recommendation would have my gratitude.
***end threadjack***
In total body count, he was worse.
Hmmmmm, so first, he was a "man of peace"... and now you're backing off to "cautious"? Nice try, but no, the Winter War was not even an example of "caution", by any measure. It likely was the catalyst for Hitler's 1941 invasion, as a matter of fact. Quite the opposite of "caution", no?
Additionally, moving his defensive line forward into Poland, invited Nazi invasion during this transition phase. Sorta incautious, wouldn't you say?
Hmmmm, so the Baltic States didn't get split up and conquered? Gotcha.
They could not have proceeded without Sov commitment and support. They did not meet their aims even with it.
Stalin fought the US by proxy, same as Mao did with Korea.
Mark, I don't accept that you do, so we disagree on this point, is all. Believing you're right doesn't make you right.
Stalin was likely murdered. You can decide for yourself why the conspirators would have wanted to do so. I think the answer is likely obvious, but alas, we'll never truly have it.
In what alternative universe is this true? Today pretty much the reverse is true. In fact we have a name for it: Blame America First.
I.F. Stone was a Soviet agent between 1942 and 1945 (when the VENONA messages were intercepted. But I'm sure he wasn't really a Stalinist. ;)
OMG this post doesn't support my anti-zionist bernstein diatribe narrative! Therefore I will ignore it. LALALALALALALA
"Zarkov to the contrary, Stalin resisted military action in Korea until Kim and Mao essentially said they were going to do it anyway."
Sorry that's not what happened. Kim first went to Stalin and asked permission to invade SK. Stalin refused. Then Kim went to Mao for help. Mao went to Stalin and got permission for the Korean War. But Stalin told Mao he would have to live with the consequences if something went wrong. In other words, Stalin said he would not provide troops. But he did provide material support. Obviously. China did not the the capacity to wage war against the US. Indeed Mao wanted Stalin to go beyond simple material support and help him build war factories located in China.
"He carefully avoided any possible confrontation with the US ..."
No. Russian MIGS with Russian pilots engaged US fighter planes over Korea. You call that avoiding confrontation? It's true he didn't send Russian troops-- he didn't have to.
"What I do have is a commitment to historical accuracy no matter where that leads and no matter whose ideological ox is gored."
Exactly. What are your references? Read chapter 34: Why Mao and Stalin Started the Korean War, and Chapter 35: Mao Milks the Korean War, in Mao. The narrative in those chapters are meticulously referenced. You don't have to believe the author. There are many other sources, but this book drills into the details of what transpired between Mao and Stalin. We have their letters and cables. We have minutes of their meetings. What more do you want?
"Look, I'm not a Communist..."
You're doing a good impersonation. But that's all right, I grew up around communists, but not my immediate family who were solid FDR Democrats.
Here go to the Woodrow Wilson Center Cold War History Project. The Korean War. This site provides documents.
How about this: Telegram from Shtykov to Vyshinsky:Go ahead browse through the documents.
FWIW, I'm finishing up Robert Service's bio of Stalin, and Service thinks that Stalin initially refused his blessing on North Korea's attacking the South, then later gave his thumbs-up, perhaps b/c the A-bomb test in 1949 gave him more confidence vs. the West.
Now, that is not the same thing as North Korea's attack being conditional on Stalin's okay, but he does seem to've been consulted beforehand &promised support.
In light of this, I see no reason to continue the discussion.
That's my understanding too, with the addition that Mao enthusiastically backed the invasion and thus deserves most of the blame.
"Stalin resisted military action in Korea until Kim and Mao essentially said they were going to do it anyway. After that, he certainly did help (though not as much as the Koreans wanted)."
Actually, I think the current historical POV on this has you over-simplifying the entire issue. Stalin was encouraging Kim, while simultaneously discouraging Mao, for purposes of his own. He was probably pursuing a policy to isolate and weaken China, Russia's more traditional (and possibly more threatening in the long term) enemy. Stalin gave his approval for the NK invasion, without which approval probably no Korean War would have occurred. Despite Stalin's prevarication with China and NK, the Korean War can be reasonably argued to be his creation. To imagine the Stalin of 1950 being manipulated into anything he didn't want to do is a reach, I think.
As for I F Stone, there is certainly anecdotal evidence that Stone re-connected with Soviet intelligence agencies in the 40's or 50's, or at least, knowingly associated with people he knew to be Soviet agents. It is unlikely that the issue will ever be resolved factually, yea or nay, given that Soviet era intelligence files are again closed. One cannot deny that Stone remained an unabashed apologist for the Soviet state, regardless of the issue, until the end of his life. The point of his mention within the OP was that had his chosen cause been national socialism, regardless of act, he would have been (rightly) pilloried, instead of held as an example of a free press.
"What I do have is a commitment to historical accuracy no matter where that leads and no matter whose ideological ox is gored. If you guys on the Right are so blinded that you can't get even a fairly simple analysis of historical facts from 50 years ago, you're never going to get things right today. "
That's more than a little smug and self-righteous. If someone with a political viewpoint different than yours made it, you'd be irritated. Or something. You should admit that perhaps none of us own the exclusive rights to the Truth, which tends to change as historical data comes to light. You know, like the fact Stone was a paid Soviet intelligence agent. Which would seem to argue against his being the voice of an independent and free press...
I'm encouraged that you realize there's a difference. There's more nuance where that came from, so keep tugging on that thread. Someday you might even recognize the nonsense in remarks like, "You're doing a good impersonation."
The question is whether Stone's book on the Korean War, based on what Americans knew then as opposed to what we know now, shows that Stone was a "Stalinist." I'm not at all convinced that it does. Stone had quite a few anti-Soviet quotes from this period too.
I have some sympathy for the poster who wondered about anti-and pro-Stone folks fitting in respective phone booths, so I'll leave it at that.
You are right to say all fascists were not Nazis, but the point is to answer the general question, "how come some folks look back with some sympathy at some things some American communists did, but not what the fascists did -- Stalin was just as awful as Hitler, right?" When people say "fascists" in those formulations, they typically mean, or are understood to mean, Nazis.
Because, if your -- and David B.'s -- point was some folks in the U.S. admired some aspects of fascist Italy but didn't buy into Nazism, well, I don't think they are judged in retrospect anything like the way Nazis are judged.
you don't really believe the following, do you??????
"while Germany from 1933 through 1938 treated Jews very badly, it wasn't until Kristallnacht that one could say that Germany was more vicious in its treatment of minorities than, say, Mississippi."
I'm sure I'm being naive in saying this, but I assume commenters are committed to factual accuracy until they provide evidence to the contrary.
My point was only that I don't care at all one way or the other if I.F. Stone was a Stalinist or not. I don't have a dog in that fight. If he was, bad for him. If not, let's move on.
I've read it and agree that it's very good. The discussion of Stalin's role in the outbreak of the war begins on page 47 (hardcover) and includes the following:
1. Kim began pushing for an invasion in 1945. Page 47.
2. For the 5 years prior to 1950, Stalin was cautious in his response. Page 48.
3. "Stalin was not unhappy with a certain level of simmering military tension... But permission for an invasion was another matter entirely. The Soviet leader was in no rush for an open conflict there." Page 48.
4. The factors which led Stalin to give the go-ahead included Acheson's speech and Mao's triumph in China. Still, "Stalin was playing a delicate game, flashing a half-green, half-amber light on the invasion. ...[S]ince it was still uncertain that everything would go as well as Kim prophesized, he [Stalin] wanted no part of the consequences of a more difficult, costly adventure; nor did he want his fingerprints directly on it." Page 49.
5. Kim met with Stalin repeatedly in April 1950, at which point he apparently convinced him. "Stalin said he was on Kim's side but would not be able to help him very much because he had other priorities -- especially in Europe. If the Americans came in, Kim should not expect the Russians to send troops." Stalin said that Mao would have to agree to send troops. Page 50.
6. "It was a classic Stalin move. He had withdrawn his opposition, minimized his own contribution, and passed the buck to [Mao]."
7. Stalin supplied weaponry and Russian generals were involved in the planning.
I think my description of Stalin as "cautious" is a fair one in light of Halberstam's book.
In contrast, Trotsky would have been far more dangerous (JMHO). Trotsky was a true believer in an international communist revolution. He would have caused far more trouble for the West than Stalin did (though he may have been less paranoid and bloodthirsty within Russia itself).
I think the response to the invasion of Ethiopia was more decisive. The "allies" didn't impose sanctions on Italy for supporting the Nationalists, they way they did for the invasion of Ethiopia.
A few intellectuals who supported the Nazis get, if not a complete pass, then a measure of tolerance. People might raise an eyebrow about, say a Heidegger Chair of Philosophy, but they'd probably come to live with it. And Herbert von Karajan did pretty well for himself after the War, despite his enthusiastic Party membership during it.
"The evidence I've seen indicates that Stalin had little to do with it." (the Korean War)
and
"Stalin resisted military action in Korea until Kim and Mao essentially said they were going to do it anyway."
I do not know that either of those are widely held views by most historians. I admit we all shade opinion to fit our preconceptions, consciously or not, but we all don't assert - at least in print - our own infallibility and the other viewpoint's blindness in refusing to accept those same infallible opinions. I'm sure you're a bright person. Grant that same acceptance to persons holding other points of view for which a reasonable argument can be made.
Holding a position that is - to be fair - far from settled, and then asserting that anyone believing anything different is incapable of making a correct assessment in any other political event is...well, something regrettable.
Someday you might even recognize the nonsense in remarks like, "You're doing a good impersonation."
Come now. You must realize that was tongue-in-cheek.
True and there are others, like National Medel of Science winner, Werner Von Braunn, (SS-Sturmbannführer, NAZI party member and requisitioner of slave labor from Aushwitz)
Well said. And, a lesson that all Americans would do well to never forget.
I probably did overstate that a bit, but after reviewing Halberstam's book a little more, it wasn't all that much of an overstatement.
It was probably my fault for not stating it more cogently, but my annoyance with rosetta's stones had more to do with the overall evaluation of Stalin as cautious than the specific example of Korea. On that point, I think most historians would agree that "cautious" is a good description of Stalin's foreign policy.
Goldberg argues that Communism, Fascism, and Nazism were merely different flavors of a Leftism that swept the world, including America, in the first half of the last century. He makes a heck of a case. As a polemical writer, he writes with a purpose: debunking the almost obscene equivalence drawn between the present American "Right", heavily influenced by libertarian thought as it is, and Fascism in its various flavors.
The problem is that the present American Left is likewise quite a bit different from the Left back then (the question of if we still face the threat of Fascist Corporatism is an entirely separate one that doesn't fit so neatly into right/left categories, if for no other reason that we will need all the help we can get, Right, Left, and Center, to counter it if we so choose to do).
The Left has traditionally understood itself as above all the vanguard of change, whatever each age thought that change to be. Tragically, at the turn of the last Century, liberal democracy was thought to have become passe, so the change on offer was illiberalism tending toward totalitarianism. Perhaps this had something to do with the new millions inaugurated into the political process for the first time by nascent liberal welfare states, and thus was a one-off phenomenon (one can hope), but it does not therefore follow that all Lefts are inherently illiberal, as one can see by looking at the Eastern European revolutions, our own, and, one can also hope, a possible Iranian one.
The point being that these "who supported whom" games are fraught with danger on all sides - danger of historical distortion, and danger of condemning those now with us of crimes they did not commit and in no sense support.
Does anyone know why FDR refused to admit them to this country? I would think being in the depths of the Depression may have been a factor, but it hardly seems sufficient.
Thanks.
"Facism is known for its ultranationalism and populism, its anti-intellectualism, its culture of violence, its insistence that it represents the true and only national identity, its treatment of dissent as treason, and its vicious anti-liberalism. Its socialism was for the favored elite, only - the true people, whose enemies are the liberals and modernity. Its as far from the New Deal, as one could possibly get."
I believe that Goldberg marshals enough evidence to make that last sentence untenable.
I think the response to the invasion of Ethiopia was more decisive.
It's a two-step process.
Before Ethiopia, Britain, France, and Italy basically got along. Remember they'd been on the same side in WWI. The response to Ethiopia pushed Italy away from the Britain and France. That basically made Italy non-aligned.
Backing Franco in the Spanish Civil War cemented the alliance between Germany and Italy.
"Remember they'd been on the same side in WWI."
Churchill on learning that Italy had joined the Axis:
"It's only fair. We had to have them in the last war."
von Braun wasn't given much choice in the matter of accepting a commission in the SS. He only joined the NSDAP in 1937, which like the SS commission was a prerequisite for continuing to work in rocket development. von Braun was a fanatic adherent to one ideal: conquering space.
Lots of basically decent technophiles wind up working for the wrong people, for example Andrei Sakharov.
(Ironically, the design of the Peenemunde rocket development and production site incorporated quality housing for all the workers who would be involved; it was intended as a model National Socialist development. After the site was bombed in 1943, with the Germans under pressure on all fronts, the truly repulsive SS Gen. Hans Kammler took over the development of the massive underground Mittelwerk facility to which production was relocated, and slave labor was used under the most atrocious conditions imaginable.)
Well said. Agreed.
In thinking it over, I've decided you're right. Stalin's caution, while probably widely accepted, is still a judgment call, not a fact. I overreacted and shouldn't have. So don't go away mad, rs -- I take it back.
Mark Field,
You are a Gentleman and a Scholar!
I disagree. Fasicism and Nazism had nothing in common with leftism, even as it was practiced in the 1930s. Goldberg merely cherry picks a few common threads and says , see, this is evidence that HItler and Mussolini were really leftists.
Baloney. Killing jews, gays, gypsys and the disabled were never a part of leftism. the left in the 30s was consumed with establishing unions, and Hitler and Mussolini had no use for unions. The left was certainly interested in some form of income distribution of the rich to the poor, something which Germany and Italy never flirted with.
To say there were any similarities between them is like saying, well, both invovled people, so they must have been the same thing.
"Desiderus - Goldberg is no historian. He is, as you note, a polemecist. Which is the practical antithesis of good history. Facism is denoted by the things I outline, it was violently opposed to liberalism, and still is."
Truths are truths, even difficult ones, and even ones unearthed by polemicists. If you have any beef with the case he makes, get back to us.
He sure was.
Mao was too.
There is zero difference between Stalin, Hitler and Mao.
I'm good with that. I'll be the first to admit the version I'd like to believe about almost anything is not necessarily the most accurate. But as long as our posts avoid logic such as "Oh @^#% yourself, you Fascist/Commie/Homo/Papist pig..."(you know, select one) I generally learn something from here, if for no other reason that I do some homework so I can express some righteous indignation. And occasionally I even discover the accepted facts seem to be getting in the way...most inconvenient.
Which is when I click on that post about the Pajanimals. Hard to get your ego bruised there...
"Desiderus, I already laid out the description of Fasism, so get back to "us" when you have a substantive critique."
It's right there at your local bookstore - now in paperback. Or is it on your banned book list? Sorry, I'm not your transcriptionist, so you'll have to read it yourself. I don't think that I can do it justice in a mere blog comment.
I believe that you are correct that fascism is illiberal (hence the tragedy of the book's title), and accept much of your definition of fascism (as does Goldberg). Not so convinced that the New Deal was as liberal as you seem to believe, in any sense of the word, especially the one that means the most to me: limited government.
And Marxism did have a strong pull for many secular Jews, here and in Germany. Which allowed a strong linkage between the two to develop in the minds of the Right.
There is that wonderful line in "Judgment at Nuremberg" between two US lawyers. When Richard Widmark's character is going to show films of the death camp survivors "Oh here comes his home movies again"
We did not oppose the Germans because of Krystalnacht, or the Blitzkreig, but because Hitler threatened our Motherland, England
As a liberal, I would especially hope that they would not be bound by that particular, unfortunate, one.
Look up the history of the eugenics movement. A great many people of impeccable liberal credentials opnely supported state action to eliminate the "unfit" and "degenerate". Actual extermination was generally more than mere progressives could stomach, but the hard-left radicals, such as the Communists, were not so delicate.
Their targets tended to be defined by socio-economic class rather than race or religion, but when the attitudes of some tribe or clan or sect interfered with building Mankind's Radiant Future, Communists crushed them.
Some Leftists were interested in organizing labor unions. And other leftists despised labor unions as a pathetic compromise with capitalism. Communists had a whole vocabulary of insulting terms for "trade unionists".
If by "tongue in cheek," you mean you didn't really think Mark was impersonating a Communist, yeah, I got that. If you mean you were just kidding, and didn't intend to insinuate his comments betrayed any sort of Marxist tendencies, then, mea culpa, I didn't realize that and I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.
No, you just think Stalin can be fairly described as a "man of peace", because that's somehow synonymous with "cautious".
That whole discussion is a digression, however. It is Stalin's paranoia which describes him. Any "caution" or "recklessness" which entered into his scheming, as to the magnitude of the body count resulting from any particular action, is subsumed by the paranoia driving that scheming.
.
.
.
Note: Whoever mentioned that Italy fell out of favor only after crossing Brit/French colonial interests... they win Final Jeopardy. Mussolini would have retired as Franco, probably better, had he not done so. Too much passion and not enough forethought, from Il Duce.
If you leave out all the qualifiers, you can make anyone's conclusion look bad.
Except that Josef and Mao were much more proficient and prolific homocidal maniacs than Adolph could ever hope to be in his wildest fantasies.
However, the reason they get such little credit for their slaughter by the left is that their motives were pure and they did not kill particular victim groups identifiable solely by their race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, weight, et al, i.e., they were equal opportunity homicidal maniacs who killed anyone they suspected disagreed with them politically.
Note the similarities with the modern leftists, who absolutely detest anyone who disagrees with them and considers them evil, regardless of race, religion, gender, etc. Which explains why certain blacks (Thomas), women (Palin), and even gays can be attacked mercilessly by the leftist groups that supposedly are on the side of all blacks (NAACP), women (NOW, NARAL), etc.
When "diversity" comes to mean differences in everything but opinion, ideology or philosophy only, then apparently mass murder on unheard of scales is just hunky-dory. Gotta break a few eggs after all...
The FBI agent that infiltrated the Weather Underground quotes Ayers as saying mater-of-factly that 25 million people might have to be killed if they couldn't be re-educated when the left took over.
Actually, the numbers are a little hard to pin down, but in total body count, Hitler probably is responsible for the deaths of more considerably more Soviet citizens than Stalin--and Hitler's total body count is undoubtedly much higher.
When the German invasion of the Soviet Union began, a lot of people expected that there would be much sympathy and collaboration with the Nazis. After all, how could life under the Nazis be worse than under the communists? The people in the occupied territories sound found out that things could be much worse.
The generally accepted Soviet death toll in World War II is in excess of 25 million. Even the Russians admitted to more than 20 million immediately after the war. The Black Book of Communism places the death toll for the Soviet Union (not just Stalin) at 20 million.
On fathers day, how about Antoine Scalia's dad?
Although Sarcasto might prefer this version
This is also quite interesting
"Desidirus, I take it we have substantial agreement that the New Deal was not Facist, as we understand Facism."
I certainly think that it was more fascist than you evidently do. By your own definition, it was very much:
- Nationalist as opposed to individualist
- Populist as opposed to pluralist
- Quite popular with intellectuals, and returning the favor, as were fascism and socialism at the time, and in that sense elitist, with "experts" as the elites
- Claiming sole authority to define the national identity
- Less inclined to identify dissent with treason than its earlier incarnation, but that's damning with faint praise
- Energetically post-liberal, as I believe it understood itself, in abrogating the individual rights-based liberalism that preceded it.
- Self-consciously modern, as were the other isms
"Be that as it may, your banned books comment, I find quite illiberal."
Yep, I'm calling you illiberal. If you were liberal, you wouldn't be afraid to engage the arguments in the book. Look, it's scary because it attacks "the Left", but by the very nature of the Left, that identity itself is ever progressively changing. Coming to terms with a past Left does not condemn your present one, indeed it holds out some promise to free you from that past one to innovate anew. 80-year-old Deals are a lot of things, some good - what they are not, ever, is New.
"The relevance of Goldberg's assembly and analysis in service of polemics is open to discounting, as your agreement that the New Deal, whatever it was, it was not Facist, implies."
You're own comments here have been quite polemical, so should I then ignore you? This is a law blog, and thus the adversarial method of truth discovery is likely to find more favor here than in the harmonious halls of
our Progressive established churchacademia.BTW, your twisting of my words is something worse than merely polemical.
"If you leave out all the qualifiers, you can make anyone's conclusion look bad."
If its any consolation, I'm with your conclusion. The great disappointment for the 20th Century Left was the rapidity with which ostensibly "Leftist" revolutions led to stagnant, risk-averse regimes. I saw the results first hand in Eastern Europe - it wasn't pretty.
I think that's right if you include the Gulag, the purges, the terror famine in the Ukraine, and the brutal incompetent way he waged WWII resulting in unnecessary deaths of Soviet soldiers. On the other hand, Hitler was in power only about 15 years, while Stalin was in power about twice as long. Had Germany won the war, Hitler could very well have liquidated millions of Slavs, finished off the remaining Jews, and executed millions more political undesirables. In sum I think it's somewhat pointless to make these numerical comparisons.
Well, this is the problem with Goldberg's (and your) argument. You both throw out a bunch of meaningless (or almost meaningless) and contradictory terms, claim that both "liberals" and "fascists" share these traits and then come to the unsupportable conclusion that liberals are fascists.
Here is a hint that your arguments are ridiculous--you claim that the new deal was both populist and popular with the intellectuals and the elites. So what you are really saying, is that everyone liked it.
Oh, for pete's sake, who was FDR's Rohm? Who was his Matteotti?
If Naziism and/or Fascism had been merely oddball ways of organizing a national economy, nobody would have thought to write a book about how admirers of their economic theories stand in the American academy of the 21st century, and Professor Bernstein would not have started this thread.
I would suggest that you may want to check your facts on this matter, because your characterization of the argument is, at best, a poor straw man. If you don't want to read the book, maybe read a half-dozen reviews, at least some of them positive ones (and there are a number of positive reviews written by liberals &progressives).
It is possible for a populist agenda to be popular with intellectuals. An intellectual elite serving in an administration can design a series of programs, some related, some unrelated, that please large constituencies and establish a power base for the same intellectuals. That's precisely what FDR did.
You can argue that his acts were good or bad, but clearly they were popular among intellectuals (but not all intellectuals) and popular among the "forgotten man" (but not all the forgotten men). Saying that "dogs like steak" does not mean that every dog likes steak, just that, on balance, dogs like steak. You can also say "mammals that aren't dogs like steak." That does not mean that all non-mammals like steak, nor does combining the two statements mean that all mammals like steak.
The left is sadly incurious about its own intellectual history.
I would really be interested to know who these "liberals and progressives" are who wrote positive reviews of Liberal Fascism. Perhaps while you are at it, you can point me to the Jewish scholars who wrote positive reviews of Mein Kampf.
Liberal Fascism may say a lot of things liberals would find more persuasive than the title suggests, but I'd save that argument for a discussion about the book itself. Trying to convince me of something you associate with a book, the title of which can reasonably be read as "Leo is a Fascist" is an uphill battle at best. If his book is better than its title, which it may be, then I'm sorry the first thing Goldberg convinced me of was not to buy it. You'll be more successful if you make his arguments directly, in your own name, and just leave Goldberg out of it.
High mark for Prof. Bernstein, still.
I was in good company before, better now.
The Third Reich and the Ivory Tower
Intellectuals, then and now are socialists who support the concept of the Soviet Union, so when Hitler was an ally of Stalin, he was one of the good guys no matter how badly he behaved and academics continued contact with their opposite numbers in Germany. When Hitler attacked Russia, he and Nazism went into the bad guys column. It had nothing to do with ideology.
We have a lot to regret about how Negroes were treated in the south, but Jim Crow even at its worst can in no way be compared with the Holocaust.
Sigh. What do you take me for, JBG? I gotta family to feed here, I can't be the personal Kindle for a bunch of putative liberals who are afraid to touch the sheqets intellectual leper!
Give Pete Beinart a call if you need a character reference, or read the chapter on Compassionate Fascism (i.e. Conservatism), with its passages that could have been written by JBG himself, if you need to get warmed up.
"Well, this is the problem with Goldberg's (and your) argument. You both throw out a bunch of meaningless (or almost meaningless) and contradictory terms, claim that both "liberals" and "fascists" share these traits and then come to the unsupportable conclusion that liberals are fascists."
I don't disagree that Goldberg has serious issues with the word "liberal". Similar issues have cost his intellectual movement its former primacy. He is not arguing that the two words are equivalent, however, just that those who self-identify as one or the other have not always been mutually exclusive, and indeed in one significant period of history significantly overlapped.
"Sorry, you get so emotional D."
Yeah, me too. Scots-Irish temperament, Hebraic conscience. Let me know how I can make it up to you.
"Oh, for pete's sake, who was FDR's Rohm? Who was his Matteotti?"
Read the sentence to which I refer. Are you really prepared to defend the proposition that the New Deal was the polar opposite of fascism? Certainly it can be argued (and I would agree! Even Goldberg might too if you held a gun to his head.) that many saw it as a stop gap against alternatives that were more fascist, but overly romanticizing anything from that regrettably illiberal era is a great danger to the cause of liberty in this one.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to catalog all of the many flaws of Goldberg (they are well documented elsewhere). Suffice to say that I find his "scholarship" on par with the economic "research" done by Amity Shlaes- revisionists conclusions desperately seeking support, obfuscated by trite anecdotes and word games.
But for your edification, you should know that many people have the same view of those who approvingly cite Goldberg as they would of someone who said, "We should totally replace our health care system with Cuba's- I mean, Michael Moore *proved it*!"
You might want to consider that.
Sometimes, but I mean that as a compliment.
I'm just offering you some advice that's worth what you paid for it. And that's to be clear in your own mind whether your main objective is to recommend a book or argue what's in it, since combining them compounds the difficulty of persuading anyone who's skeptical about either. Speaking for myself, I have a lot less knee-jerk resistance to an argument from Desiderius than one from Jonah Goldberg. I'm not defending that kind of bias, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't there.
As for the book review, Peter Beinart's recommendation means less to me than yours, but like you said, there are only so many dollars and hours. So as long as I have plenty left to learn from the likes of Kerr, Volokh and Anderson, they'll get my patronage before someone who markets himself (e.g., titles his book) with crass appeals to divisiveness.
I hope you get a few chuckles out of it, as I did when I first read it over a year ago.
Yeah, I would, but I'm not a Conservative. I don't expect the AC to come up with much worthwhile, so I'm not surprised that that link carries on that tradition.
Loki and LM,
OK, I'll take a stab at arguing for why its worth consideration.
Goldberg opens a lot of cans of worms that have heretofore been delved into only by the hard-left (which naturally leaves out a lot of stuff that Goldberg highlights) and very serious scholars* whose work, unfortunately, is presently not the most accessible to the general well-educated public.
Thus that public, left, right, and center, is unaware of much of that history - history, that if more widely known, might engender a more humble take on our own exceptionalism, whether in reference to America itself, or our Progressive traditions.
I think its very important for our various Rights, with their varying levels of jingoism, to come to terms with that reality. Judging from the sales of Goldberg's book, somebody's reading the thing, and if liberals aren't aware of the arguments it advances, it's going to be hard to counter attempts to pin that reality on "liberals".
Likewise, IMHO, our various Lefts suffer from a too romantic view of the particular Left of that time, precluding them from imagining new, less illiberal, ones.
Now I don't doubt that reading the thing for a liberal with Progressive sympathies will be roughly akin to, well, my experience in reading just about every Marx-sodden book I was assigned to read in pursuing my graduate degree at one of our elite institutions of higher learning. Keep in mind that for me Marx is to Hayek/Smith/Berlin as Jeane Dixon is to Stephen Hawking, so I had to dig through a lot of bullshit to get to the occasional pony. In the end, though, those ponys were worth the effort. Perhaps feeling some of my pain might enhance your empathy. Besides, getting a copy of the thing might bring back fond memories of when one was 14 trying to get that Playboy out of the bookstore. Alternatively, I could mail you my copy in a plain brown wrapper, if you prefer.
A couple warnings:
One of Goldberg's biggest problems is his use of the word "liberal," by which he means, roughly, when a negative connotation is clear, Progressives who believed they were carrying on the liberal tradition by leaving behind all the good stuff. The good stuff being Berlin's Negative Liberty conception from the article which I linked above, which I believe fairly encapsulates Goldberg's take.
As Goldberg tries to stretch his argument toward the present, his argument indeed becomes more of a stretch, which I believe I noted in my original comment, but his evisceration of TR and Wilson alone is worth the price of admission, and can in no sense be considered "Right-Wing".
* - Goldberg offers several cites to the work of such scholars for those interested in further investigation, which I consider one of the principal strengths of the book.
Is Goldberg's book itself scholarly? Not exactly. It's certainly more scholarly than any other popular political book published in the last ten years, but that's not saying much. Then again, the books which our scholars produce have progressively tended toward the, for lack of a better term, scholastic - increasingly inbred and self-referential, jargon-laden and inaccessible to the general reader, so I'm unconvinced that "scholarly" is the gold standard that it seems to be, unless one considers the Summa Theologica the end all and be all.
Perhaps in seeking to cleanse their work of ideology, contemporary scholars have also lost the capacity to hit on new ideas, something that Goldberg's book offers in plenty - some cockamamie, some tired cliches, but not a few original takes on vexing questions. You might be surprised how many of those takes you consider to be "liberal".
Well, yes, of course. The Wagner Act was the polar opposite of gleischaltung of the German unions. Not killing opponents in the other party was the polar opposite of murdering them. Not purging Jews from the academy (the private sector was doing it, though) was the polar opposite of purging them.
Not bankrupting the nation was the polar opposite of bankrupting it, and not invading Canada or Mexico was the polar opposite of invading Poland or Holland.
Not seizing businesses and selling them to your friends at knockdown prices was the polar opposite of doing that (although, later, after Dr. New Deal withdrew in favor of Dr. Win the War, that did happen.)
I realize that some liberals (who are sometimes none too Liberal) consider that interfering with the free actions of plutocrats is the most heinous of all crimes, but no doubt some people would have complained if Roosevelt hadn't rescued the banks, just as they do about Bush II and Obama trying to keep the financing system from committing suicide. Cui bono?
I still say, the question of force is the difference. Nobody (that I know of) is worried about the attitude of academe to Henry George.
"But for your edification, you should know that many people have the same view of those who approvingly cite Goldberg as they would of someone who said, "We should totally replace our health care system with Cuba's- I mean, Michael Moore *proved it*!"
You might want to consider that."
Yeah, well, I also approvingly cite Matthew Arnold, of all people. I mean, how passe can you get? I call 'em as I see 'em. I don't pretend to be omniscient.
And also notice that I haven't excerpted the book here, nor have I indicated full-throated approval of its argument. I just believe that it merits serious engagement, hostile or otherwise, if for no other reason than to understand why people aren't taking claims such as the one of Sara's I originally highlighted so seriously anymore. Unilateral disarmament in that debate doesn't strike me as the most liberal approach.
"I realize that some liberals (who are sometimes none too Liberal) consider that interfering with the free actions of plutocrats is the most heinous of all crimes, but no doubt some people would have complained if Roosevelt hadn't rescued the banks, just as they do about Bush II and Obama trying to keep the financing system from committing suicide. Cui bono?"
Goldberg's argument is that under the New Deal the plutocrat foxes were invited in to guard the henhouse.
Seriously, how would y'all react if conservatives were widely denouncing an uncomfortable but popular book from the Left without reading the damn thing?
Oh Lord, D. How hollow are your pleas for others to read Goldberg.
"Sigh. What do you take me for, JBG?
Sometimes, but I mean that as a compliment."
“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
- Mark Twain
"Oh Lord, D. How hollow are your pleas for others to read Goldberg."
So only Conservatives need read conservatives? Heck, I've read, and enjoyed, Howard Zinn. To counter the counter-enlightenment, Berlin had to, you know, read them. He even, gasp!, attempted to empathize with their arguments.
What a cramped conception of liberalism you've received. Wonder how that happened?
Whatever, the reason for your need to insult others, you do yourself no honor and your argument no good. Especially, when it is so clealry without foundation.
If the book was called American Nazi and the cover art was these two with Hitler mustaches, I'd think the denunciations were understandable, maybe even intended.
It might be refreshing to see someone try to show that That Man in the White House was really subverting the Republic in favor of the plutocrats, but I think I'll take a pass on that.
At least it suggests that Amity Shalaes isn't the silliest person writing about the '30s this year.
I read it last year like you did. Most paleocons don't like Goldberg's book for the same reasons I suspect some here just might.
"If the book was called American Nazi and the cover art was these two with Hitler mustaches, I'd think the denunciations were understandable, maybe even intended."
You're a Shiny Happy Person? Who knew? The smiley face comes from George Carlin. The title from H.G. Wells. I think I've been clear vis-a-vis my feelings on both title and cover.
I finally figured out what you were trying to tell me a few comments back. The book originally came to mind entirely apart from his argument - it was the facts that he draws attention to (these get thinner on the ground as you go through the book - he's no long distance runner) that I thought would have been handy to have access to for the present discussion.
My dog in this fight can be found in the parenthetical here, so maybe that's where I got sidetracked. I think Goldberg's book, and its popularity, indicates that those leftward who share my concern on that count might find some unexpected support in the lost tribes of liberalism swimming in the sea of the "Right".
So "man of peace" means no more than "cautious, not reckless, aggressive only when it is perfectly safe"?! I suppose if those are the only criteria for the "man of peace" accolade, Stalin might qualify. After all he did not launch wars against Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania; he liberated them from the Nazis, then stayed on to guarantee the peace and afford those countries all that Soviet hegemony had to offer. The Baltics, those may be seen as among the "aggressive only when it was perfectly safe" examples. And using proxies to extend Communism's dominion, that would be someone else's "aggression," so not incompatible with "man of peace" either? So I.F. Stone was neither a Stalinist, nor an apologist for Stalin (if there is a difference between those)?
The various "isms" were in vogue starting 100+ years ago, and not surprising that some of that thought would slip into our body politic, or be inserted.
Temperamentally, I see everybody's favorite "progressive", Teddy Roosevelt, as the closest thing to a Hitler-style personality that we've ever produced in the WH. Watch him flailing his arms about, and pounding his fist... who does he remind you of? Perhaps FDR and Wilson wielded the power of the presidency more expansively, but he certainly deemed himself the leader the fatherland deserved, I'd say. But then, Wilson deemed he should "lead", even non-functional from a sickbed. And FDR deemed he should lead forever, even from a grave (my favorite paraphrase from President Truman, when FDR's wise men asked him whether "the President" had decided on a question previously, Harry responded "No, he decided on it just now.").
Turnover is a good thing. The totalitarians, and those pregnant with evocative thoughts, dislike it, but better if they're turned out before they're birthed.
Again, you left out the qualifier: I said Stalin was relatively cautious, and the specific comparison I made in my first post was to Trotsky. IOW, I was stating that we in the West were fortunate because Stalin was less likely to foment international revolution than Trotsky would have been.
This is, AFAIK, a consensus view of historians. I'll let Halberstam speak again: "The immediate belief of the people then gathering around the president in Washington was that the invasion was a direct Moscow move, ordered by Stalin and obeyed by his proxies in North Korea. That would turn out not to be true; years later it became clear from the opening of archives in Moscow that the driving force for the invasion was the young and overconfident Kim Il Sung, and that the ever cautious Stalin had somewhat reluctantly gone along with it." My emphasis.
My original post said that the phrase "man of peace" was "grating", but was accurate in the sense that Stalin was cautious (as I then defined it in that and subsequent posts). Maybe I should have included the word "limited" (limited sense), but otherwise that's all I meant and all I said.
As far as Poland and the Baltic nations went, Stalin merely followed the same policy that Czarist Russia had followed for centuries. In 1939, Poland had existed as a nation for all of 20 years out of the previous 144 years, during which time it had been part of Russia. Lithuania hadn't existed as an independent nation since 1569; Latvia since ever (under Polish rule since 1583); and Estonia since ever (it became part of Russia in 1721).
Moreover, Stalin was extremely cautious in the way he went about recovering these traditional Russian territories. He waited 10 years after he took power, and then moved in only when he had negotiated the deal with Russia's traditional foe in the east, Germany. This was classic European power politics, and there was nothing adventurous in it.
I don't know that Stone was ever a Stalinist, though if you define the term broadly enough anything is possible. I questioned whether he was one after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and Prof. Bernstein agreed that he didn't have any basis to say that. From what I've read (sorry, don't have a handy link), Stone denounced the murders of the Old Bolsheviks as early as 1934 and also denounced the show trials in the mid-30s. Myra MacPherson's (Stone's biographer) criticisms of Paul Berman's claims about Stone can be found here.
As I said above, I don't have a dog in this fight. If Stone was a Stalinist, bad for him, but it doesn't affect me in any way. From what I know of Stone, I'm skeptical of the claim, but I only know his writings from the 60s onward, and he certainly didn't give off any Stalinist vibes in that era. In any case, my general rule is that I'm reluctant to call people Stalinists or Nazis absent pretty strong evidence, and full consideration of any counter evidence.
BTW, Stone's book on Socrates is very interesting, even if I disagree in part with it.
Not my reading. He was willing to foment international revolution early and late, but he got burned badly with open revolt in Shanghai in '27 and learned caution -- boring from within rather than taking to the streets.
And it's true that he never gave up tsarist notions of where Russia's borders should lie.
But the difference between him and Hitler was that Stalin was not anxious to send armies across international borders. This, I think, was the reason Churchill, no friend of Communism, thought Hitler more dangerous.
My best evidence: In '40, when Stalin was anxious about a German threat to Leningrad, he tried to purchase Hango or exchange Russian territory with Finland for it. The USSR was quite open about it. There were books by Stalinists in English laying it all out.
Only when Finland refused to deal did Stalin occupy the Baltic republics and open the Winter War with Finland (and also occupy Moldova, which seems to have been either a piece of opportunism that vitiates my thesis or a military move that supports it, depending upon how vital you think Moldova is to rebuffing a German attack through Romania: on the whole, it looks like opportunism).
But he did that before, not after, his agreement with Hitler.
Stalin may have been a crazed murderer, but his fear of Germany was realistic -- a lot more realistic than the leaders of the democracies had managed up to then.
"I'll let Halberstam speak again ..."
Halberstam is hardly the last word on the Koren War. His book is more in the nature of journalistic pop history than a serious historical work. Other books, and other sources, such as the Cold War History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center paint a different picture. One could say that Stalin was "cautious" in the sense he didn't immediately give Kim permission to attack SK. But by ultimately providing NK and Mao with arms and material to attack SK with the full knowledge that the US would likely counter attack hardly sounds cautious to me. Let's face it, Stalin enabled the Korean War-- without his assistance there would have been no war.
"This is, AFAIK, a consensus view of historians."
This sounds a little like the global warming argument. Assert a non-existent consensus and declare the matter settled. I already provided references to the contrary.
Exactly. I've read enough of Goldberg to regard him as an unintelligent writer who pretty much repeats, without much insight, the right-wing Theme-of-the-Week. That seems like a reasonable basis for not reading his book.
That doesn't mean I won't read any conservatives. But it does mean that I'm not impressed by arguments that go, "Goldberg shows that..." I don't care what Goldberg purports to show. If the case is strong, state it yourself. Otherwise forget it.
I would like to thank Sara for her link to that amusing review. viz.
As JS suggested, don't we read blogs for this stuff?
Eric Hofer was right.
I would have gotten a few chuckles, but I'm not really much buying what AC is selling.
"It might be refreshing to see someone try to show that That Man in the White House was really subverting the Republic in favor of the plutocrats, but I think I'll take a pass on that."
He makes a similar argument vis-a-vis ADM et. al. today. He doesn't single out the New Deal, rather he argues against its exceptionalism in the area of corporate influence on, and in, Washington. He argues that the plutocrats on the inside thereby gain an unjust advantage over competitors on the outside, with the advantage scaling with size disparity.
Goldberg has remarked that researching the book made him much more libertarian. By corporatism he is referring, among other things, to undue collusion between big business and government.
I think that our present creeping "too big to fail" corporatism is the 800-pound gorilla in our midst. The Blue team calls it Big Business and blames the Red team. The Red team calls it Big Government and blames the Blue team. Meanwhile, the gorilla keeps eating all our bananas.
Stopping it will require alliances transcending partisan rivalry.
Nice cheap shot there, Eager. No doubt Stalin as well advocated the limited government alternative thereto.
Look, y'all have more than enough cultural power presently to get away with ignoring the book entirely. But that's not how you got it, and from where I sit it doesn't look a promising way to keep it.
"Jew" above queried this, but I suspect more blacks were lynched in the 1930s in Mississippi than Jews in Germany during the same period, at least before
(I count 32 lynching victims in Miss. pre-Krystallnacht listed at this site -- haven't got time for more searching right now. Anyone got any pre-Krystallnacht stats for Jews lynched by Nazi thugs?)
If mirth is the mail of anguish,
then bravado is the crest,
defiance lance,
irony poignard.
But grace,
grace disarms.
Much obliged.
"Sounds like D is proposing we read every "popular book.""
No, just ones that may present unexpected opportunities, or, to my original point, truths that could enhance one's understanding. I doubt that Isaiah Berlin would be much enamored of Goldberg's book, all things considered, but I have little doubt that he would be even less enamored of the widespread ignorance of the facts contained therein.
And to be clear: I dissent as to the consensus here regarding Goldberg's character as well.
"I don't care what Goldberg purports to show. If the case is strong, state it yourself. Otherwise forget it."
I think the man who makes the argument should get credit for it, especially if said man is widely reviled, fairly or unfairly. To do otherwise would be cowardly and dishonorable on my part.
I knew that, ergo the advice. I'm glad you figured out what I was trying to say without my having to take another clumsy run at it. Right after Learning How to Write Better on my to do list is Being Less of a Busybody.
Hey, busy yourself all you like. There's nothing more valuable than good criticism, and my skull's so thick it takes a few good whacks to make an impression.
Work beckons.
But, history as I read it says it wasn't you guys but the Comintern that made the connection first.
What's unfair about remembering that?
I think the man who makes the argument should get credit for it, especially if said man is widely reviled, fairly or unfairly. To do otherwise would be cowardly and dishonorable on my part.
I don't disagree. What I meant was that it is not enough to cite Goldberg, or his book. If you are impressed by an argument he makes you should restate it, giving him due credit.
What I object to is saying "Goldberg shows that..," without explaining the reasoning, and then arguing that those who disagree should go read the book.
As it was me, who first apparently provoked you to extended references to Goldberg, I would futher caution, not to assume people's "ignorance". It's, to me, wrong, given the facts, that the New Deal was Fascist, as we have defined Fascism, above -- such confusion is worse than ignorance (which is bad enough). I, further, simply distrust Goldberg because he is a polemicist (that's not a character judgment). I am certain Berlin would not appove of such blatent (mis)use of facts.
Why you think this appeal to keeping or getting power is attractive to we all, at all, is very odd.
Sam W - You are welcome. Fun wasn't it?
Ties nicely to one of your broader points, (whether or not that point is exemplified by Goldberg's book): when things seem counter-intuitive, it's often because our intuition is ill-informed.
Don't tell Des, but I enjoyed it too.
"Ties nicely to one of your broader points, (whether or not that point is exemplified by Goldberg's book): when things seem counter-intuitive, it's often because our intuition is ill-informed."
Tell me about it. Hence the anguish.
"I get tired of the equation New Deal=communist/socialist, since FDR was a devoted coupon clipper and the best friend American capitalism ever had."
Given that era, I don't disagree, but weren't nobody the polar opposite of fascism in that era*, as Goldberg, lacking as he does certain ideological fetters, is able to catalog pretty convincingly over the space of 162 pages* (the best in the book, in my estimation).
Which is my point, entirely apart from Goldberg's - that era strikes me as a particularly inauspicious one to which to turn for finding the ideal Left, let alone the ideal Liberalism. As if an ideal Left even makes sense, given the putative Left commitment to change and progress.
"But, history as I read it says it wasn't you guys but the Comintern that made the connection first."
Well the Comintern could be pretty perceptive in such matters, as they had something of an interest in the question. Then again, they were also shot through with bullshit, their ultimate downfall, so take it for what its worth. Goldberg discusses the question of Stalin's creation of the term "social fascism" at some length. His take: bullshit.
So why does Goldberg use the same term? His definition is different than Stalin's (and not that different than Sara's above). If this seems unusual, consider how many terms you might define differently than Stalin.
* - sorry, byomtov, as Goldberg is already accused of cherry-picking in those 162 pages, I'll pass on picking from his pickings, making those facts even easier to ignore.
Mine too.
This is not the same as the weird attempts by paleocons to blame Darwin for Naziism, though.
The social fascist label was a lie, but one that has a certain existence still.
"As it was me, who first apparently provoked you to extended references to Goldberg, I would further caution, not to assume people's "ignorance"."
Seeing as how you've now both trumpeted you own intention to ignore Goldberg's counterargument to your claim that the New Deal was the polar opposite of fascism, and followed it up by ignoring my own list of flaws in your argument, I'd say you've got the start of a pretty decent ignorance streak rolling here.
Ignorance is the luxury of power, but not much of a strategy for maintaining it.
"It's, to me, wrong, given the facts, that the New Deal was Fascist"
Well there's a big gap between that and the polar opposite. I'd say (contra Goldberg, who does get a little overexcited) that its closer to the opposite than to the thing, but the needle sure ain't pegged.
"I am certain Berlin would not appove of such blatent (mis)use of facts."
And yet he read plenty of polemicists in his day, and in some depth and with remarkable empathy. Ever wonder why?
"Why you think this appeal to keeping or getting power is attractive to we all, at all, is very odd."
"Liberty for wolves is death to the lambs."
- Isaiah Berlin
If liberals don't pursue legitimate power through legitimate means, its not fairy-godmothers who will seize it in our stead.
Read University of Chicago Zoology Professor Horatio Hackett Newman's Readings in Evolution, Genetics, and Eugenics (University of Chicago Press, 1921), starting at page 465 for a discussion of how governments have solved the problems of feeblemindedness by passing eugenics laws, and fear of how the inferior forms of humans were increasing in America.
Starting on p. 475:
Here's another book, by Southwestern College Biology Professor William M. Goldsmith, The Laws of Life: Principles of Evolution, Heredity and Eugenics (Boston: The Gorham Press, 1922). Again, all three of these are brought together, and starting on page 398 is a chapter whose title alone tells you where this is going: "Moulding the Super-Man." The topics to be covered are also pretty typical of where this stuff was headed:
I could keep going, but this is the sort of racist trash also appears repeatedly in Democratic newspapers of the period 1916-23 that I have read while researching other topics, such as the Sacramento Bee, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The Bee was quoting a prominent birth control advocate of the time about the dangers of the black race outreproducing the white race--and that was the reason why birth control had to be legal. The Chronicle article warned of the danger of "race suicide" if little (white) boys had to grow up in apartments instead of houses.
Now, the NCSE points out that after World War II, prominent evolutionist often argued against eugenics. Well, sure. The smoke rising from the ovens put something of a damper on the party. But when you compare Stein's careful observation that Darwinism wasn't the only component that created Naziism with the NCSE's false claim that this connection of evolution to eugenics and Naziism is "deeply offensive and detrimental to public discussion and understanding of science, religion, and history"--they are either in way over their heads, or lying.
* - aside from a few cranks like me. Actually one of the best critiques of Goldberg I've heard, from an elderly liberal scholar who actually engages Goldberg's argument and finds some things to like (sorry, my Google-Fu is weak, can't find it now - he was on a panel with Ron Radosh), chastises him for ignoring (see, he does it too!) liberals who were against fascism from the start. Reading between the lines, I'm guessing (my ignorance - note!) that they exerted increasing influence as FDR's term progressed, as Goldberg trains most of his fire on the first few years of the New Deal - Blue Eagle and whatnot.
By that standard, this guy led to this one, who in turn led to him.
"Oh D, clearly not a broad as your *ignorance,* since your the only one who uses the phrase 'polar opposite.'"
"Facism is known for its ultranationalism and populism, its anti-intellectualism, its culture of violence, its insistence that it represents the true and only national identity, its treatment of dissent as treason, and its vicious anti-liberalism. Its socialism was for the favored elite, only - the true people, whose enemies are the liberals and modernity. Its as far from the New Deal, as one could possibly get."
"But keep flailing away."
Your wish is my command.
De Young (owner/publisher SF Chon) and McClatchy (owner/pulisher Bee), would be apoplectic to hear you call thier newspapers Democratic, as they and thier papers were Republican.
D, what a rich source for disgreement you've mined, from something so seemingly meager.
And now that Berlin has been introduced, there is a might polar opposition between the pragmatism of the New Deal and the idealism of the Nazis and Communists.
I don't have a citation, since I'm relying on memory, but somewhere Berlin says he learned to distrust idealism by experiencing the idealism of the Germans.
There can be no more polar opposite approaches to economics than Blood and Soil on one hand, and Harry Hopkins on the other: "People don't eat in the long run. They eat every day."
The idea of superior races is such a cartoon of Darwin's work, it's more whole cloth than embroidery. And Nazi ideology is what a deranged clown turned that cartoon into.
"And now that Berlin has been introduced, there is a might polar opposition between the pragmatism of the New Deal and the idealism of the Nazis and Communists."
Which explains why James was such a seminal figure for Sorel and those enamored of his methods. Or not.
German idealism (shorn as it was by Romanticism of much in the way of counterbalancing Realism) made people more susceptible to the raw pragmatic power plays of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, et. al., but the men themselves were pragmatists to the bone, or even nihilists. There is no moral equivalent of war. War is hell. Hell is no place to look for morals.
''Justice is what the Aryan man deems just''
- Alfred Rosenberg
Another topic Goldberg addresses in the book.
A better title of which might have been: Varieties of Fascist Experience
And how is Bread, that means by which the vitality of the Soil is transmitted to the Blood, so foreign to the Nazi program? For the Volk exclusively, of course.
Obviously not meager to me. The idealization of the New Deal has been clogging the arteries of my beloved Liberal Institutions with leftist leftovers for as long as I have labored in their blessed vineyards. Vineyards constructed with meticulous care and great sacrifice, and now rife with grapes rotting on the vine, vines unpruned, new vines unplanted.
The stagnation engendered by illiberal Leftist revolutions I noted before is not exclusive, alas, to lands beyond our shores.
Save your love for someone that can love you back. Loving ideologies is the road to . . .
"Loving ideologies is the road to . . ."
Hello? The institutions. The people who built them. The people who still strive heroically to carry them on. My peers. Hence my name.
I'm not against leftist leftovers because they're left. I want to get to the stars. I'm impatient for change. I'm against them because they're leftovers. Stuck in the past. In this case, about the worst possible past in which one could be stuck.
- Bertrand Russell, The Ancestry of Fascism
I found that it had worked once, at least, in Hitler's Germany. Of course, the fact that he could set wages and use slave labor helped tremendously.
If I am wrong, and it actually has worked somewhere, please let me know. I try to play fair with her.
I agree that that was one of the results of the budget priorities of the Administration in '37, but damned if I can figure out why people who argue strenuously that Keynesian spending does not work also and simultaneously make that argument.
Not so many left-brained thinkers around here, I guess.
"Oh, you love "instutuions" and "the people." How not reassuring."
Sorry to hear that. What would it take to reassure you? I guess the institutions can't love me back, except for that hospital that my church founded that kept me alive with a kidney transplant - that's kinda loving, I think. Lotsa love at the public school where I work, but of course teenagers have unique ways of showing it. My principal's pretty awesome (and superhuman, evidently). But people - they're pretty good at the whole loving you back thing, except for a couple parents I pissed off, I guess. Perhaps I've missed your meaning.
"Sorry, D. Suicide for yourself and your nation is not pragmatic."
Suicide? Smells fishy. Prime suspects. Accessory to the crime. Call the DA, I think we have a case!
As for that last one, I think there you've finally found your idealist:
"Churchill's dominant category, the single, central, organizing principle of his moral and intellectual universe, is a historical imagination so strong, so comprehensive, as the encase the whole of the present and the whole of the future in a framework of a rich and multicolored past. Such an approach is dominated by a desire - and a capacity - to find fixed moral and intellectual bearings, to give shape and character, colour and direction and coherence, the the stream of events."
"Not so many left-brained thinkers around here, I guess."
Hah! Good one. Don't tell Dan28.
"The idea of superior races is such a cartoon of Darwin's work, it's more whole cloth than embroidery. And Nazi ideology is what a deranged clown turned that cartoon into."
Schicklgruber was no lone gunman.
Goldberg's starting point is the recognition that fascism was popular. Any guesses why? Reads like some of the worst, but alas popular, ideas from Left and Right glommed together.
I think you're going to need a bigger clown car.
"Aren't clown cars one size fits all?"
= )
"Not popular enough to sweep any elections, unlike whatever political creed it was the FDR practiced."
That contrast is one of the talking points of democracy promoters like Goldberg and myself. Perhaps if it were a stronger one, we'd have more influence. Alas, it's only true on a technicality at best.
I would actually consider the New Deal more idealistic than any of the isms, on the business end at least, which helps explain its continuing appeal, and how those like Goldberg and Schlaes who question it continue to leave so many cold.
More of a pragmatist personally, FDR famously advocated vigorous experimentation. I seriously doubt that he ever envisioned running the same experiment repeatedly with no regard for the results.
Well, yes and no. The key diagnostic event was the collapse of the antisemitic parties in Austria around 1900.
It wasn't that the Austrian Christians rejected the antisemites. It was that everybody was antisemitic, so a single-issue antisemitic party had nothing to offer.
Had there not been several other equally antisemitic and nationalist -- if not quite as crazy -- parties as the NSDAP, then I'm sure Hitler would have swept the '32 elections.
Still, nobody thinks Roosevelt swept Landon because Roosevelt was an antisemite, even if he was.
"Still, nobody thinks Roosevelt swept Landon because Roosevelt was an antisemite, even if he was."
He swept Landon because the American people decided that if they had to have Progressivism, they'd rather have it good and hard, from a real pro instead of a rank amateur. Same reason Obama swept McCain/Palin.
See also: market crashes, clear capacity for greatness
Thankfully, in our case, that greatness was also great goodness, that overbore the curse of the age. Our President is in all times more than head of government. In times of great need, more also than head of state.
Alas, the Krauts saw similar capacity in Schicklgruber - on both counts - greatness and hard-core Progressivism. They got the moral equivalent and the real thing in the bargain.
"There followed the iron '30s, of which the English poets of the time - Auden, Spender, Day Lewis - left a very vivid testament: the dark and leaden '30s, to which, alone of all periods, no one in Europe wishes to return, unless indeed they lament the passing of Fascism. There came Manchuria, Hitler, the Hunger Marchers, the Abyssinian War, the Peace Ballot, the Left Book Club, Malraux's political novels, even the article by Virginia Woolf in the Daily Worker, the Soviet trials and purges, the conversions of idealistic young liberals and radicals to Communism, or strong sympathy with it, often for no better reason than that it seemed the only force firm enough and strong enough to resist the Fascist enemy effectively; such conversions were sometimes followed by visits to Moscow or by fighting in Spain, and death on the battlefield, or else bitter and angry disillusionment with Communist practice, or some desperate and unconvinced choice between two evils of that which seemed the lesser.
The most insistent propaganda in those days declared that humanitarianism and liberalism and democratic forces were played out, and that the choice now lay between two bleak extremes, Communism and Fascism - the red or the black. To those who were not carried away by this patter the only light that was left in the darkness was the administration of Roosevelt and the New Deal in the United States."
On Roosevelt:
"Washington was doubtless full of quarrels, resignations, palace intrigues, perpetual warfare between individuals and groups of individuals, parties, cliques, personal supporters of this or that great captain, which must have maddened sober and responsible officials used to the slower tempo and more normal patterns of administration; as for bankers and businessmen, their feelings were past describing, but at this period they were little regarded, since they were considered to have discredited themselves too deeply, and indeed for ever.
Over this vast, seething chaos presided a handsome, charming, gay, very intelligent, very delightful, very audacious man, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was accused of many weaknesses. He had betrayed his class; he was ignorant, unscrupulous, irresponsible. He was ruthless in playing with the lives and careers of individuals. He was surrounded by adventurers, slick opportunists, intriguers. He made conflicting promises, cynically and brazenly, to individuals and groups and representatives of foreign nations. He made up, with his vast and irresistible public charm, and his astonishing high spirits, for lack of other virtues considered as more important in the leader of the most powerful democracy in the world – the virtues of application, industry, responsibility. All this was said and some of it may indeed have been just. What attracted his followers were countervailing qualities of a rare and inspiring order: he was large-hearted and possessed wide political horizons, imaginative sweep, understanding of the time in which he lived and of the direction of the great new forces at work in the twentieth century - technological, racial, imperialist, anti-imperialist; he was in favour of life and movement, the promotion of the most generous possible fulfilment of the largest possible number of human wishes, and not in favour of caution and retrenchment and sitting still. Above all, he was absolutely fearless."
This reminds me of a story I once read about one of Roosevelt's fireside chats, early in the New Deal. He told the listeners that they had, no doubt, heard men call his policies, "fascist" or "communist," "socialist" or "despotic." His response was that these claims were, simply, untrue; but he went further, and asked each American to judge for himself, out of the experience of his own life. He asked them -- were their liberties diminshed; was their freedom of choice taken away. He was confident that they, on the whole, would reject such claims, if they only judged for themselves.
If you have a comment about spelling, typos, or format errors, please e-mail the poster directly rather than posting a comment.
Comment Policy: We reserve the right to edit or delete comments, and in extreme cases to ban commenters, at our discretion. Comments must be relevant and civil (and, especially, free of name-calling). We think of comment threads like dinner parties at our homes. If you make the party unpleasant for us or for others, we'd rather you went elsewhere. We're happy to see a wide range of viewpoints, but we want all of them to be expressed as politely as possible.
We realize that such a comment policy can never be evenly enforced, because we can't possibly monitor every comment equally well. Hundreds of comments are posted every day here, and we don't read them all. Those we read, we read with different degrees of attention, and in different moods. We try to be fair, but we make no promises.
And remember, it's a big Internet. If you think we were mistaken in removing your post (or, in extreme cases, in removing you) -- or if you prefer a more free-for-all approach -- there are surely plenty of ways you can still get your views out.