I'll stop here but you're projecting on to me a favored libertarian stereotype of the kind I saw done by the cultists at the Mises Institute who regularly denounce Charles Dickens every year as a Red Guard for having written Scrooge, that if one has an objection to a plutocrat acquiring the reins of power and robbing you blind, you must be a "Commie." Good one!
On Dec 27, 2024, at 8:21 PM, Chessset <chessset@aol.com> wrote:
Spoken like a modern Red Guard, full of fervent hysterical outrage and determined to crush all the ideological ingrates and unprincipled enemies before him. All you are lacking is a dunce cap for the victims! But then, some terribly evil capitalist should be willing to sell that to you.
I would say, what's really, really funny, is that your Trumpite, National Conservative allies/politicians whom I know libertarians devote themselves to serve their financial interests, and the Oligarchs/Plutocrats like Thiel, Vance, et al., behind them, to whom libertarians declare their loyalty to, like Ron and Rand Paul to Elon Musk, as the "New Military Data Industrial Complex," have even more contempt for libertarians and libertarian ideology than some others might! But I know that's all a put-on, as no one does more to serve the interest of Military Industrial Complicit Plutocrats, than their devoted servants, the Libertarians!
Who soldier on devotedly, helping make the world safe for mass surveillance/targeting companies like Thiel's Palantir, and the drone manufacturers/trigger pullers, that fire the missiles killing Palestinians and Russians in mass quantities, while Thiel pal Palmer Luckey, as do all the Military Plutocrats pocket virtually non-taxable fortunes, paid through the CIA and Israel, with U.S. middle income taxpayer funding. With libertarian icon Charles Koch running his mass consciousness activities against Palestinians and genocide protesters, and the U.S. populace, while libertarians pretend, or lie to themselves, that complicity in that doesn't attach to them!
Meanwhile, libertarian billionaires with the full support of libertarians in general, thinking like lemmings as they do, and working with Israeli fascists and their American Conservative counterparts, wage a Judicial Coup against even that very minimal Israeli Rule of Law that benefits Palestinians at least slightly, so that there are absolutely no legal barriers to ethnic cleansing and genocide, while at home here in the U.S. they work to "reinterpret" (subvert) the Constitution with Conservative allies to strip away even minimal "rights" contained within it for us ordinary people, and any regulatory protection for safety, etc., for Americans, while demanding, on behalf of their Plutocratic Masters, who pay them well for their services, "Freedom for me, but not for Thee." I know it all too well, as I've seen it in action so much of my life.
Now with Trump/Musk/Vance, you Nietzschean cultists will do to us Americans, what you "libertarian fanatics" do to everyone when you get the opportunity, hit us hard with your Shock Doctrine, like you did the Russians, Chileans, the American middle class, etc., like some kind of Mafia crew, with the list of crimes too long for this space, all for the benefit of Plutocrats! I would ask how do you sleep at night, but I know the answer, like a baby, with dreams of Charles Koch or some other Plutocrat giving you a loving pat on the head, and saying, "that's a good boy." I'm sure my one-time libertarian friend is blowing the dust off his old articles calling for the privatization of the Post Office, and other inherently governmental functions under the Constitution, like prisons, courts, etc., to enrich some Plutocrat, whose "baby doesn't need a new pair of shoes," unlike so many "ordinary babies," and their families, etc. 🤣😂🤪😅
On Dec 27, 2024, at 5:13 PM, Chessset <chessset@aol.com> wrote:
Ah, I am devastated ... .
😳🥺😵💫😥😢😭😱 On Fri, Dec 27, 2024 at 10:22 AM, Todd Pierce <todd.e.pierce@icloud.com> wrote: That was a joke? You're right, with a second reading. Then everything I said about all other libertarians, still applies to Bandow, and restores my sense of the world, with Musk, and his ready volunteers, the Paul's, preparing to ram it home, good and hard, to this country! With their pals, Vance, Thiel, et al.
Take a bow! On Dec 27, 2024, at 3:32 PM, Warren Coats <wcoats@gmail.com> wrote:
Todd,
I am surprised that you didn’t get the joke. I suggest that you adjust your medication.
Happy New Year Warren Coats 1211 S Eads St. Apt 2101 Arlington Va. 22202 (703) 608-2975 https://wcoats.blog On Dec 27, 2024, at 8:51 AM, Todd Pierce via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:
(Prescript: I would not expend this effort to write this down, but for my increasing dismay as I watch the Trump administration take shape, and the role that Musk and Ramaswamy have in applying "Shock Therapy" to the U.S. itself, with predictable effects of harm to people I know and love. Even if the many Washingtonians on this list are above all that, and even callous to it. I'm not. But even worse, as I'm reading a recent book, Nuclear War: A Scenario, by Annie Jacobson (see link at bottom), and the role that the SecDef and JCS Chair have in deciding to launch nuclear weapons, a chill comes over me realizing that means Trump, the war maniac, Fox News commentator, and Heritage Foundation associate Pete Hegseth, and whoever Trump names as JCS Chair have the fate of the world in their hands. And that is truly terrifying, even worse than Biden's team who lack the political judgment as Goldwater Democrats to tamp down the wars that Trump himself initiated, but at least seems to prefer the world go on existing, notwithstanding how reckless they've been. Unlike the ultra-militaristic Conservative of the Trump administration. Conservatives, named below, are the very people who did all they could to support the military officers eager for pre-emptive nuclear attacks throughout the Cold War, and to incite the pre-emptive attacks themselves, as portrayed in Dr. Strangelove. Guess what, the dangerous words coming out of the "villains" mouths in that movie were taken directly from the words of Conservative commentators at National Review magazine, from who are now called "Traditional Conservatives!" If it had been in their power during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or any other military crisis from 1945 to 1991, they would have "destroyed the world," to "save it.")
Here is a very much belated (and long, but see it as the Introduction to "The Origins of American Fascism," ) response to Doug Bandow (Chesset). Quote from email below: "Warren, don't you think it is time that we "libertarian fanatics" confess that is what we have spent our entire lives promoting? And we thot we could get away with it! But no, Todd is on the case. No one else noticed, but now, decades later, we have been caught, in flagrante delicto!! 🤪😜🤪"
Thank you Doug; I very much respect you for coming out with this statement as few people have the courage to reconsider their "paradigms," or to acknowledge earlier error in their beliefs (I do, and doing penance for them, as this is). Or even the courage to support someone publicly (me) here for criticizing the libertarian side of what is now beyond dispute as the incoming regime, America's First 100% Pure Fascist Regime. Already openly run by libertarian Oligarchs/Plutocrats, as conceived by their long ago whored out libertarian/ Conservative ideologues, having long been paid for by earlier oligarchs as one can read of from "true" histories of libertarians/Conservatives. The latter is defined as the post-1945 Conservative Movement cult/conspiracy, ideologically created by the son of a fascist sympathizer, William F. Buckley, Jr., and two fellow fascists, all experienced in waging political/psychological war to subvert countries from their CIA experience.
And they set out to do the same to the U.S. and its Constitution, to create an American Fascist State, supplant its "1789 Constitution" with one minus the Bill of Rights, and promote a Military Industrial Complex of the kind necessary for global military domination, and internal domestic repression. And using "anti-communism" as a handy camouflage of their true ideological agenda, their underlying fascist ideology of anti-Enlightenment thought, the heart of any fascism. That, Willmoore Kendall made no secret of with his identification of "Liberalism" as the true enemy, not communism.
Added to that ideology as necessary to nullify the high taxation remaining of the New Deal, and to free the Oligarchs of any regulatory constraints, was the libertarian side funded by ultra-rich oil men, like Charles Koch's father, making up a genuine cult-like, conspiratorial movement centered on the ideas of Ayn Rand, Mises, Hayek, and Milton Friedman, et al., for the ultimate purpose of acquiring control of the U.S. government at least to the point of having impunity from any law. The two, Conservatism and Libertarianism, were combined by Frank S. Meyer of the same fascist cult, to make "Fusionism," a synthesis of the two creating something far worse in giving incentive to the Oligarchs to really get behind the fascist project. Which one sees today with the Oligarchs/Plutocrats of the incoming Trump administration, even while they mislead us with lies of caring for the middle class!
Previously, with the worst regime we'd had, the Bush/Cheney (with the same old oil men now behind Trump) regime standing out, but not exclusively so going back to 1963, we still never got closer than 90%-95% or so, on the "Spectrum of Fascism." But Trump has announced he will take us across the "Finish Line," into an all-out 100% fascist, totalitarian mind-control state, with its very own "history" having been manufactured by revisionism of the right for decades now, but in high gear since 2015, blaming everything bad in U.S. history, on "Goldstein," the Democrats, and NeoCons of both parties, even though NeoConservatism is merely a "chip off the old block" of what the fascists now distinguish themselves as, Traditional Conservatives (and National Conservatives).
Yet, contrary to Doug, no one here has had the "moral courage" to stand with someone (me) publicly against the all-out propaganda assault being waged against the List as a whole by the New Right/Conservatives, supporting Trump, and through him, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, and all the other Israeli fascists whose side Trump/Vance are on, though some have privately. With that fully revealing of how it was that the "German Legal Revolution" succeeded by 1933, by silence of those who should have opposed them (first they came . . .). So, thank you for that Doug! As I said above, I am doing my own penance for my earlier errors of beliefs as a Conservative, and partial libertarian, explaining my frequent, long, emails to atone for that by rebutting the historical lies/revisionism we're repeatedly being told by our "New Right" representatives here, with those kind of lies the very essence of Totalitarianism!
While I was never persuaded totally of "libertarianism," I was influenced some by its free-market economics theory, though never to the extreme of libertarians, and definitely not by its innate ideological essence of Nietzscheanism. But I studied libertarian theory to better understand the "Law & Economics" movement. I still uphold free market ideas of Adam Smith, tempered by Smith's own support of some degree of welfare economics and the need of sympathy (empathy, in todays words) for the poor, as against Statist control of economics of the fascists of National Conservatism/National Socialism.
In fact, I and two fellow law students attended a Summer Mises Institute course in about 1995, which I left feeling like I had been part of a cult for a week. That to the best of my knowledge, I was the only one who didn't succumb to the cult leader's will, respectfully disagreeing with Lew Rockwell and others when I did disagree, which was more than a few times. And then argued against my two friends on the way back to MN who had been persuaded, both successful, politically involved attorneys since, with one increasingly radically right as a Trumpite, whom I haven't been associated with now for at least two decades. The other one died at a young age, but not before, as a libertarian, supported Bush/Cheney and the Iraq War.
The "high-point" of the week at Mises was when Ron Paul showed up, who didn't impress me, as that was before 9/11 and the War Years, and Mises instructors failed to persuade me that there was never a cause worth fighting for, even when Nazis invade your country. Unless you're a Nazi sympathizer yourself which with reflection, could have been the case amongst what I now know are Nietzscheans, with their ideology. Lew Rockwell would continue to lose any credibility with me over the years, as would Ron Paul, even with their war opposition which I shared, but would come to realize that was considerably lower on their priority list than mine, as it became clear their highest priority was to serve the Plutocrats, as both Ron and Rand are making fully clear now!
As I say, I put aside my previous paradigm of National Security Conservatism long ago, with my time in Desert Storm decisive for me with its self-evident lies visible while I was there and since. Now, I am doing penance for my time as a "Conservative," and consumer of William F. Buckley's/James Burnham's "fascist political theory," ( I'd never read Willmoore Kendall's truly fascist political theory, until someone here put me on to him, with glowing praise of Kendall as a "real Conservative," which persuades me that it is Kendall who was the "Father of American Fascism," though all three concealed their fascist ideas under a veil they called "Conservatism" then, in the 1980s, now called "Traditional Conservatism." Which had falsely been sold to the public, naive people like me, as "defending the Constitution," and I was too unacquainted with political and legal theory at the time to know better. To my discredit, back then, they made no misrepresentation of Conservatism as non-militaristic, unlike what TAC and QI falsely claim today.
And I, having become a Cold War Hawk, though not coming to that until the mid-1980s under the influence of Conservative Lies and Threat Inflation, and having become involved with the military again after some years of absence and having said "never again," knew full well that as a Hawk, I was a Conservative, and belonged in the Republican Party as the party most compatible with that. With no one lying about that, at that time, with those lies only coming later as The American Conservative magazine/Quincy Institute fictionalized right-wing history, while incessantly cheerleading National/Traditional Conservative, and Plutocracy-building libertarian ideologues, and the Military Data Industrial Complex Plutocrats themselves, like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.
I admittedly passed through a Republican NeoConservative stage as a Jack Kemp supporter, with "Supply Side Economics" his mantra, though that wasn't his appeal to me, when I got more involved as a NatSecCon in 1985, as they didn't have the baggage of segregationism as Conservatism still had. Though even Buckley had begun to put aside his support for segregationism by the late 1980s as an obstacle to electing Republicans. But he never put aside his hostility toward civil rights for minorities, and non-minorities, as remaining innately hostile to the Bill of Rights, as his mentor Willmoore Kendall and his father had taught him. He just learned to suppress those thoughts in "polite company."
The NeoCon option was there only because those few Democrat Hawks, like Goldwater's friend Scoop Jackson, didn't want to be associated with Republican Hawks/Conservatives as they were still overwhelmingly segregationists and hostile to civil rights, like Jesse Helms and John P. East throughout the 1980s, both good "Traditional Conservative Warhawks." Or at least they hated those who had opposed segregation, like Jesse Helms did Martin Luther King, Jr. But Scoop Jackson was a pretty lonely Democratic Party Hawk until the Clintons came along and "Republicanized" the Democrats through the Democratic Leadership Council, to create its "Goldwater Wing." And the "Traditional Conservatives" distinguished themselves from their publicly repentant, former segregationist allied Conservatives, by calling themselves "Paleo-Conservatives," and to distinguish themselves from those who pretended to turn over a new leaf on race, the Paleo's even pretended to be less militaristic, but Samuel Francis gave the lie to that with his panegyric to the Southern Military Spirit.
Back to what I said above, Doug, I respect you for saying publicly what a fair number here have said privately to me, but not having the courage to take a public stand against what, with Trump/Vance, is now fully apparent as 21st Century American Fascism. And intertwined with Israeli fascism as they are, and working with both Israeli and American Conservatives and Libertarians to subvert the Rule of Law/Constitution in each of our countries, as I've shared information from Haaretz on over the years, about Kohelet Forum, the Federalist Society, CPAC, etc. This is in the "tradition" of the anti-US Constitutionalist, Traditional Conservative Willmoore Kendall, so beloved here on this email list, even by "Fusionists." Who, along with libertarians, should be even more outraged than I am that such a fanatical opponent of the Constitution should be so heavily promoted here on a email list ostensibly supportive of our Constitutional Republic form of government. If, they actually held to the principles of "liberty" they profess. With their silence, standing as evidence that they do not.
So it's me (not to say that to flatter myself, or to martyrize myself, but only to state a fact) that's been denounced by the Fusionist and the Traditional Conservative, with the latter even absurdly bringing in a panegyrist biographer of the fascist Traditional Conservative, Trump's precursor, Willmoore Kendall, to denounce me even more! That was, for my standing up for the actual Constitution, not the made up so-called Philadelphia Constitution invented by Kendall, against far-right Trumpite ideologues using Kendall's political/legal theory to subvert the actual Constitution which is under constant assault by Traditional/National Conservatives/Libertarian, all fraudulently claiming to support the U.S. Constitution. B.S. is all one can say to that by anyone who can actually read, such fascist subversive materials as "Traditional Conservatives" Buckley, Burnham, Kendall, and Fusionist Frank S. Meyer spewed out. With the latter perhaps worst of all, being first to combine authoritarian Conservative political/legal theory, with libertarian economic theory for the benefit of Oligarchs, and fraudulently calling that "Freedom!"
When I've pointed that out, with evidence of these right-wing fanatic's own writings, and been denounced for my trouble, there was nothing to hear here, but "chirping," on an email list where such outright enemies of the Constitution as Kendall and Meyer were, and are in their writings, routinely promoted here. Little wonder we now have a warmongering "Totalitarian Democratic Fascist" regime ready to take power, as against the only partial, warmongering fascist regime giving up power.
I've experienced this email list for over 15 years now, and was always quite supportive of most everything posted, as I always was with your writings Doug, and shared what at one time was a general "antiwar" consensus here. But I admit that in 2015, I began to be disillusioned more and more when Trump arrived on the scene, and with The American Conservative (TAC) magazine being "Straussianized," and "Kochized, with that reflected here on the list, with TAC (and now QI's New Right) well represented here. I told my friend Jon Utley of my misgivings for his magazine, but he explained that it was finally making money, and gaining more readers. Which of course it would, becoming more pro-war as it was, against China, though subtly at first, and against Iran by adoption of Trump, and fully joining with the Straussian/Schmittian Claremont Institute and Hillsdale College as full partners, and consequently, pulling those right-wing fanatics in to read Michael Anton, Curt Mills, Johnny Burka, and with Hazony coming along, the National Conservative fascist Zionists as well.
On this email list, are representatives of an accumulation of all the cultish, ideologies/ideologues, of post-1898 America that have rendered this country, FUBAR. Culminating with the incoming Trump administration, having all the qualifications of classical Fascism, with National Conservatism making that complete. For clarification, I don't use that term as it has been used so often as merely "defamatory." Instead, I use it as a descriptive, term in the field of political theory, for what its collective political ideas constitute: fascism.
Even with the Goldwaterite Democrats beginning with the Clintons (whom I was assured by an Arkansas Republican stationed with me in Saudi Arabia in 1990-1991 that he was as "good" as a Republican on National Security, Democrats were routinely denounced as "weak" on so-called National Security by Conservatives. Particularly by Traditional Conservative Jesse Helms and his coterie of fellow Traditional Conservatives like John P. East, and later, Jefferson Davis Sessions, with NeoCons tagging along. And no matter how far toward militarism Democrats went, Republican/Conservatives always denounced them for not going far enough, with libertarians always tagging along.
But now, right-wing historical revisionists, reinventing themselves as "New Right Trumpite Restrainers," are "brainwashing" us with right-wing historical revisionionism that it's the Republican/Conservatives who have always stood for and worked for peace, and no one calls them out for those lies! Many even bolstering that lying propaganda by adopting those right-wing memes, such as the Mencken term "Wilson's War," used by Mencken and libertarians ever since WWI to boost their preferred Republican Oligarchs, and to deflect attention from the most zealous, actual warmongers. That is, Teddy Roosevelt and the Republican Party who harangued Wilson and the public to get into WW I immediately, and everyday thereafter until we did, almost 3 years too late, according to the "Republican Peaceniks" of Roosevelt, Harding, Taft, et al., with all of them equally fanatical for far more repression than Wilson gave us, with all demanding the totalitarianism of martial law. As Republicans routinely do today. And yet libertarians like Ron and Rand Paul cheer them on, and call for more, giving the lie to libertarians claiming to stand for true freedom. With this Ex. A for lying historical right-wing revisionism, which is evident to anyone who lived through even just the last part of the Cold War and read Conservative commentary, even denouncing Reagan for talking with Gorbachev. That's the actual history of "Traditional Conservatism":
"An event sponsored by The Quincy Institute and The American Conservative"
Here is what that was about, in my opinion as a trained Psyops specialist, to include graduate level education:
<Pages from The Cognitive Campaign- Strategic and Intelligence Perspectives.docx>
BLUF: "When discussing the issue of influencing consciousness, it is customary to refer to two layers of consciousness: a basic essential one that includes “belief in religion” or “affinity for the nation,” and a second layer, which is made up of “positions and opinions."
That is essential to understand how we, as a "similarity group" (see file), is a "target audience" in the "battle for consciousness," as is well described in this chapter of an Israel book by someone who would later lead the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, with it's hasbara program, now conducted in the U.S. by National Conservatives/ Trumpites:
<4-Low-Intensity Warfare.pdf>
Here are some positions showing "real" Traditional Conservativism, of Jesse Helms post-Cold War, ideological partner as he was with TradCon John P. East before East died in 1986, after writing gushingly about Willmoore Kendall, and Leo Strauss, giving the lie to Traditional Conservatives being in opposition to Strauss:
Enlarging NATO? Driven by bi-partisan Goldwaterites! "But debate on the issue has drawn scant public attention, and the opponents have been swamped by the vigorous support afforded enlargement not only by the Clinton administration, but by key Senate leaders, including Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and senior committee Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware.>
International Law! It's been under continuous assault ever since Traditional Conservative Jesse Helms, vowing to fight it every step of the way, just as he did Constitutional Law, his entire career! Helms Vows To Make War On U.N. CourtArms Control? "Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has asked the Bush administration to formally reject a range of international agreements, including the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), a 1997 package of agreements concerning the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, and the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel landmines."
I had not realized how embedded that form of fascism and war-mongering was in the American Conservative Mind, until I began reading the so-called Paleo-Conservatives and Libertarians and their false claims to oppose so many of our wars. Especially the right-revisionist, libertarian, Justin Raimondo, whom I've since come to realize was so full of sh*t, it made his breath foul when I finally met him. Though not realizing that was the cause until later when he went all-out for Trump. I had already begun to realize how so much of his writing was exemplary "right-wing historical revisionism," but he removed any doubt of that in boosting Trump, and reinventing right-wing history.
In an earlier life, as a National Security Conservative, my field of interest was Low-Intensity Conflict, and particularly "Political Warfare." In putting this conference together in 1989, I applied what I had already learned of Pol. Warfare/Psy.Ops. Some of that was from the people who I'd invited to present at the conference, such as Richard Schultz who wrote on Political Warfare and Disinformation, as did Antonio Ybarra, one time Sandinista, and then Sandinista opponent.
With my point being, I recognize Disinformation, Political Warfare, Psychological Operations, Information Warfare, and/or Cognitive Operations when I see it, and just like what Buckley, Burnham, Kendall, and Meyer were waging against the U.S. public to "mold it's consciousness" as appropriate for an ultra-militaristic, fascistic, society, and a Military Industrial Complex to go with it, so too are the Trumpites of National Conservatism/Traditional Conservatism, and Paulite Libertarians. All supporting Musk, Thiel, Trump, Adelson, Charles Koch, et al., and supported by the aforesaid, every step of the way, to repress the American public and exploit us for their own gain, even at the risk of nuclear war which all their Military Industries will profit from, if they survive.
But our Plutocrats have factored that in too, with "mineshaft" equivalent options already planned for, leaving the rest of us to die here on the surface of the U.S., not counting the hundreds of millions who will die globally. Just like the U.S. Conservative founders of the Conservative Movement, and the military leaders they supported and promoted, were willing to accept 100 million Americans being killed following our U.S. "pre-emptive" nuclear attack on the "Sino-Soviet bloc" that they also called for, before, during, and after the Cuban Missile Crisis (now China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, with the same targeting Plan as before for how US war planners of Trump's see China and Russia as indivisible).
<Low-Intensity Conflict 1.jpg.pdf> <Low-Intensity Conflict 2.jpg.pdf>
I've had some good mentors teaching me information warfare, ones I would disagree with now as at my Low-Intensity Conflict conference, and to include David Horowitz whom I was at one time in weekly if not more communication, and others I agree with now, but didn't as a conservative, as seen at the link below. With the ones above what I'm doing penance for today.
So, thanks again Doug, if you're read this far!
P.S. It's probably not safe to say such things as this, or won't be for long as plans are being made for some version of what can be called the "Amstapo." And when they come into existence, we can expect the same kind of moral courage which we've seen so far opposing Trumpism and National Conservatism: chirp, chirp, chirp.
On Nov 27, 2024, at 12:37 AM, Chessset <chessset@aol.com> wrote:
Warren, don't you think it is time that we "libertarian fanatics" confess that is what we have spent our entire lives promoting? And we thot we could get away with it! But no, Todd is on the case. No one else noticed, but now, decades later, we have been caught, in flagrante delicto!! 🤪😜🤪 On Tue, Nov 26, 2024 at 10:33 PM, Warren Coats via Salon <salon@listserve.com> wrote:
-- Salon mailing listSalon@listserve.comhttps://mlm2.listserve.net/mailman/listinfo/salon
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