Nice snag from the Weekly Standard, courtesy of Yglesias:
YOU CAN FILE THE LESSONS of Mussolini's rise under "H" for Hegel, the idea that extreme movements always beget extreme counter forces. It was the far left, by relentlessly chipping away at the foundations of Italian life, that gave birth and power to the far right--as it did a decade on when Hitler rode nearly the same path under similar circumstances.Yglesias reminds that one method employed by il Duce's dragon-slaying apparatus was to pour castor oil down the throats of those accused of dissident speech. Which is a protected freedom, here in America.This is what seems most pertinent today, as "activist" groups like Moveon.org and demagogues like Michael Moore and angry men like Al Gore and George Soros rail so irrationally against both the president (comparing him to Hitler and Mussolini in a variety of contexts) and the structures of daily American life, including the legally adjudicated Supreme Court decision that ultimately decided the 43rd presidency in advance of a tedious recount that would've yielded the same outcome.
As it turns out, Judge Calabresi's intemperate comparison was indeed useful, though with an irony he didn't intend. Either this November or in four years, George W. Bush is going to be turned out of office; even the judge agrees with that. Someday, though, a populace provoked by the left's constant fire-breathing may look for a dragon slayer who won't go quite so easily.
...Or is it? asks Glenn Reynolds:
And here’s a question: Freedom of the press, as it exists today (and didn’t exist, really, until the 1960s) is unlikely to survive if a majority — or even a large and angry minority — of Americans comes to conclude that the press is untrustworthy and unpatriotic. How far are we from that point?Marvelous stuff. I understand that MoveOn once featured but denounced a Bush/Hitler ad submitted by an anonymous Internet nerd. For shame, Internet nerd! I also see that the Bush administration has keenly taken the Internet nerd's unfortunate judgment as an opportunity to link Adolph Hitler to John Kerry. For shame, Bush administration! Now: What about this problem of actually significant right-wing institutions fetishizing the government suppression of free speech? Posted by Kriston at June 30, 2004 12:38 PM
Damn. I invoke the Dimmy Karras rule.
I'll paraphrase the comments I left at MY:
People have been shouting about Ashcroft's crushing of dissent and Bush being a fascist that by the time real fascism were to emerge, nobody will believe the left's complaint. Right now they're crying wolf.
Somebody put to bed this Hitler shit...and no, it didn't help that the RNC/Bush Cheney group used the rejected Moveon.org image, for fuck's sake.
Damn. 15 more minutes before I can get my drink on. See ya'll later. --s
Posted by: j.scott barnard at June 30, 2004 1:43 PMI doubt there's much we can do to dissuade these nuts. Their basic case is usually that various speech and privacy rights are overextensions/misinterpretations of constitutional clauses, which they may also argue are no longer relevant in a modern context.
Unfortunately, that's exactly how I (and many others) feel about the second amendment. The historical comparisons to various repressive regimes are possible on both sides, as well.
The only advantage that I think we possess (besides being right) is that there are obvious and self-evidently reasonable ways to approach compromise gun control measures, whereas compromise limits on speech are much harder to define, and segue nicely into a much more terrifying slippery slope argument.
Posted by: Tom at June 30, 2004 1:47 PMNow, this might sound stupid, but I'm dying to ask - is Mel Gibson religious?
