The Greatest Trick the Socialists ever Pulled was Convincing the World They Didn't Exist...

And like that... they're gone.

The reductio ad Hitlerium is an irritating logical fallacy, which almost never serves to improve understanding or conversation. Calling the OWS crowd Nazis, or even fascists, is a stretch. That needs be said before anything else.

But pointing out what Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei means is a handy and fun way to irritate socialists, as Ladd Ehlinger has discovered. I've been round the block with lefties desperate to argue that nothing about the Nazi's was left at all (keep scrolling), so I sympathise.

It all comes to how the word "socialist" is defined. Typically, those on the Left prefer to define "socialist" as "one who favors ending private property." This allows anyone who hasn't gone that far left to escape the title of "leftist" altogether. By this and similar ellisions, the Left pretends to be the Center.

But I prefer to define "socialist" as "one who favors the use of direct political power to remake society according to principles of universal justice." I like it because it allows the myriad of squabbling social thinkers, from LeFebre to Lenin to Mussolini to Mao to be recognized according to their common traits. It puts all the tyrants who covered their tyranny in the cloak of True Justice in a single pot.

And it allows us to draw distinctions between them. We can see Progressives, Mensheviks, Trade-Unionists, Corporatists, Fascists, Nazis, and Communists as similar, but also note their wide and obvious differences. We can grant that your average "liberal" Democrat has no intention of carting anyone off in a boxcar, while continuing to point out that their calls for "unity" are code for "now stop arguing with us."

A few objections:

• But Nazis and Fascists (and no small number of Progressive Democrats) hated Communists. If Communists are Socialists; how can Nazis, etc. be Socialists?

Answer: Large political/philosophical movements engage in vicious infighting all the time. See also, Christianity in the 16-17th centuries. For that matter, the Communists hated and murdered other Socialists with great regularity. No history of the Russian Revolution is complete without tracing the roles played by the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries in the Bolshevik rise to power, and the cruelty with which the Bolsheviks repaid them.

• Isn't this just a cheap method of putting Progressive Democrats in the same boat as Fascists and Communists?

Answer: Not at all. In fact, it works within the way Progressives think of themselves: as sensible radicals who oppose totalitarianism. A Progressive who accepts my definition of "socialist" can still say "Sure, I want to see society change, and am prepared to use the law as a tool to bring that change about. But I'm not going to impose change at the point of a bayonet. I'm humane and have a conscience."

As evidence for my assertion, I invite anyone to read Section III of The Communist Manifesto, wherein Marx lists the varieties of socialism which fail to meet his standard of scientific materialism: Feudal Socialism, Petit-Bourgeois Socialism, German or "True" Socialism, Conservative Socialism, etc. If Marx could admit that numerous and mutually contradictory versions of socialism existed, why cannot we?

Hippes = Tea Partiers

Zombie » The Electric Tea Party Acid Test

Come for the amusing premise, stay for the neat graphic and stipulation of the difference between bums and hobos.

The Essayist #20: The Right of Revolution

An oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters.
-Henry Clay

Every revolution contains within it something of evil.
-Edmund Burke

       With which of these two elegant quotations would the average person agree? The difficulty of the question becomes more apparent the longer it is considered. In the West, where the American and the French Revolutions constitute the birth-cries of the modern age, we feel an obligation to assent to the former. Yet any serious study of the French, Russian, or even the American Revolutions will compel us to give at least credence to the latter. We may shrug it off by retorting that revolutions are not made with rose-water, but this is the more persuasive with the understanding that whatever revolution we live under need not be repeated and will not be undone. In other words, we may ignore the blood of our birth so long as we need not be born again.
       But is revolution permanence? Have we established political structures so rooted in truth as to be past changing? To an extent, democracy is justified on answering, “yes” to this question: when the people rule, they need not revolt. But it is hardly a novelty to point out that majority rule can be tyrannical; James Madison pointed this out repeatedly. And if a majoritarian tyranny comes into existence, a revolution could surely be justified in destroying that democracy. Couldn’t it?
       Or could it?
       This essay will argue that every political system exists not for its own sake, but to protect a certain value that its framers held as essential to justice and order. This may seem obvious, but consider again its implications with regard to our current and beloved political ideal: democracy is not an end in itself, but a means to protect society. If it fails in that end, it may be reformed, altered, or even destroyed. No system of government is absolute; every state has an escape clause.

Music is the Devil's Tool

So Iran has banned Music, and Jay Nordlinger of NRO draws a parallel to Lenin, who apparently never touched the stuff, for fear that it would awaken human feeling, which was anathema to his work. He also makes mention of the oft-quoted fact that the Nazis were great lovers of art and music. How do this circle be squared?

For me, it bespeaks a difference between a totalitarianism of asceticism, and a totalitarianism of passion. Communism would be the paramount example of ascetic totalitarianism; one characterized by purification of the human spirit. The true Communist suffered for his ideology, was nailed to it like a cross, and was supposed to bear his ills with a martyr's patience. This may be one of the reasons why we tolerate Communists more than other shades of tyrant: Trotsky, Lenin, and Che were perfectly willing to share the misery they imposed on others.

Hitler, on the other hand, had no truck with self-denial. His Nietzsche-derived creed demanded just the opposite, that the desires of the self were holy, and to feast upon the weak was glorious and right. Hence, the Nazis devoured all that was good in every land they conquered, and took the pleasure of this enjoyment as proof of its truth.

Iran strikes me as being more in the ascetic vein, as Khomeni's condemnation of America as the Great Satan is of a kind with the denunciations of Babylon in the Book of Revelation. With all that in mind, the only question becomes "What took them so long?"