POLITICS Re: Dirty Secrets of H1N1 Vaccine?

[Guest guest]

>

> While all the emotive rhetoric is interesting, nothing you write above

> makes the Birch Society or any group that has the above as an

> " essential shared viewpoint " - fascist. In fact fascist governments

> would likely put the JBS on their enemies list, because however you

> define it, it is not compatible with limited government. There are

> some items that do define fascist thinking:

>

> Secret prisons

> Torture

> Spying on all citizens

> Arrests and indefinite imprisonment without trial

> Rampant militarism

> Secret detention

> Enforced disappearance

> Denial and restriction of habeas corpus

> Prolonged incommunicado detention

> Unfair trial procedures

>

What you are talking about is the methods of authoritarian governments--it

certainly doesn't distinguish fascist governments from communist ones, military

juntas, or our own government in many respects. Fascism is a social

movement--it's not just an authoritarian government. Fascism is about national

purity--each nation will have different ideas about what its national character

is, but the Birch Society exhibits those key characteristics during the

McCarthy era. If you read _None Dare Call it Treason_, you will see what I mean.

The list of internal enemies is quite long--and calling it treason definitely is

inviting the arrest of people who have different political views that they

define as unAmerican. They are pro-liberty if you agree with them, not if you

disagree.

>

>

> > A few scary quotes:

> > " In April 1966, the New York Times reported....

>

> I'm scared alright, not because of the quote from the NY Times, but

> because someone is quoting the New York Times authoritatively.

>

>

Oh boy. We should hate the NYT in 1966, too?

>

> That is just a bunch of hyped up rhetoric that doesn't define terms,

> assumes the reader already shares an interventionist point of view

> (which is a very good assumption), and panders heavily to emotional

> platitudes designed to get people worked up who are statist to the

> core - governmentalists - totalitarian progressives, whatever you want

> to call them. Which is to say a large chunk of American society,

> though they normally like to call themselves Democrats and

> Republicans.

>

> The quote would be slighty more honest if it read like this:

>

> " ...on " the increasing tempo of radical right attacks on

> **tax-funded** local government, **tax-funded** libraries,

> **tax-funded** school boards,**tax-funded** parent-teachers

> associations, **tax-funded** mental health programs, the **tax- loving

> war mongering** Republican party and, most recently, the **statist

> loving state worshipping** ecumenical movement. … "

>

OK, , we get it. You are a big fan of Austrian economics and libertarian

political philosophy. We could argue quite a bit, I'm sure, about whether

starving government of funds and limiting government to defense is a good idea.

I personally don't see taxpayer-funded libraries and schools as oppression.

However, I fail to see what this has to do with the Birch Society. The

Birch Society's roots were in those who were isolationist not to save on taxes,

but because they were sympathetic to fascist movements as a bulwark against

communism. They were against libraries because they were alleged vehicles for

spreading communism.

> > and

> > " Today the Birch Society still sees communism as a threat, and sees the

collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern >Europe as false and " planned " by

the Russian/Eastern European governments which it sees controlled by " the

insiders " . "

>

> So that means that seeing communism as a threat in the past was either

> wrong or no longer necessary. If the former then we know the NY Times

> and its ilk were clearly wrong as has recently been shown even within

> the ranks of our own government during the McCarthy years. If the

> latter that can only mean at some point in the past the Birch

> Society was correct and the NY Times agreed with the JBS.

You missed the point--it is not whether communism was a bad idea, but whether we

should dismantle liberties in the name of fighting communism, going after an

internal enemies list because of their political views. Are you not taken back

at all by the claim that the communist countries threw off communism as a ploy

to further the communist agenda. How's that for paranoid? And that fits with the

classic conspiracy theories of fascism, whereby secret conspiracies of elites on

seemingly opposite sides of the political fence (bankers, Communist

intellectuals, etc.) are actually connected as part of a really devious plan.

The only thing they leave out is to identify their common identity as Jews.

Bill