Searching around the blogsphere I realized that I missed somethings a week ago on Independence Day: Howard Zinn had his own anti-patriotic celebration pleading with people to root out nationalism in all forms from flags to songs. Him and the old Marxian international Left believes that the very existence of independent nation/ states is evil in itself and civil/liberal nationalism is just as bad as militarist, nativist,chauvenistic, illiberal nationalism.This is fairly much the stance of hard-core libertarian ideologues.
Zinn and Michael Parenti are the Poster Children of what is wrong with the hard Left in the United States. Zinn is famous for The People's History of the United States which he leaves out anything good about the USA's history and employs embellishments and shoddy research on everything that he believes is malignant - which is everything, according to Zinn. As for Parenti, Professor at Berekely(where else?), though I thought that his Assassination of Julius Caesar was an excellent and accurate narrative delving into the real reason why Ceasar was killed by the reactionary Roman Senators( Julius assaulted the slavocracy and implemented land and other economic reforms), Parenti sounds like a lunatic on about everything else that is a big issue with him. For instance, Dr. Parenti doesn't like his far-leftist brothers and sisters picking on Joseph Stalin;he dresses down Noam Chomsky every chance he gets for doing so and all but accuses Chomsky of being a closet right-winger. Just as the Far Right lunatics have their Holocaust Denial, Parenti engages in Gulag Denial: according to Parenti, just a few thousand died in Siberian labor camps instead of the millions that is widely accepted by everyone today, including the Russians themselves. And it wasn't 'all that bad'. Parenti blames the West for Stalin's purges and collectivization of agriculture and claims that everyone who was shot by NKVD thugs were as guilty as sin and deserved their fate('and it wasn't all that bad'). Parenti is also an opponent of nationalism in all forms, though he contradictory praises Marshal Tito's Yugoslavia - who was also a nemesis of Parenti's hero, poor, misunderstood Stalin. Tito organized Yugoslavia on the lines of a national-economy and allowed private enterprise and he was not a communist in the Leninist-Stalinist mode at all, which is something that Parenti seems to bemoan that has evaporated and wants to bring back the good ol' days of the Cheka, gnostic Command Economies with its monolithic, over-centralized, corrupt Big ,Big Bureaucracy....
I got sidetracked here, as usual. I have no stake in the matter, or really care, to save the looney-bird Far Left from themselves anymore than I seek redemption for the Right wing nuts. In fact it is good that they all exist to provide entertainment and point the lucid people of the realm of what not to believe in. But there does exist some benevolent figures in the American Left on certain things. Noted is David Schweikart's Market Socialism; Schweikart not only is a chronic revisionist Marxist for endorsing the 'Market' in the first place, unlike most Marxists he believes that market-socialism requires a protectionist national economy and there is not much any of this fuzzy internationalism about his plan. Reading his work, I about spilled my coffee mug when I read that he believes in the necessity of tariffs even between comparable market-socialist states. Though I doubt that market-socialism could ever take root in the United States - and there are good reasons why it should not - and I do not endorse Schweikart's economics, he remains refreshing to read after previously getting a fill of Zinn's and Parenti's gooblygoop....
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On the 'Christian Nation' controversy, I beg to differ with the secularist side that holds up Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, and the fact that 'God' does not make an appearance in the writing of the Constitution, as the smoking guns that we are not a Christian nation per se. The real meat can be found, or not found, in the Federalist Papers - the argument for ratification of said Constitution. One would think that if Jay, Madison and Hamilton wanted to create a Christian Nation and that their Constitution was based on Biblical principles, that they would provide Scriptural quotes and writings of the Church Fathers on government to present their case. Thumbing through my own copy the other day, I couldn't find any of their arguments presented from a Judea-Christian base. Instead, their references were pagan Greece and Rome, the Swiss Cantons, the British constitution, etc...
....and the Founding Fathers didn't base the Constitution on that of the Iroquois Nations, either.
2 comments:
This comment is not about your Zinn/Parenti/Schweikart post as such, interesting though that is. It is to express appreciation for your significant contribution to The Economic Nationalist.
The Economic Nationalist is of course not a very significant blog and maybe never will be. This is fine with me. Maybe like you, I write for fun when the mood strikes me, and am pleased to have the handful of regular readers I have. You have your own blog (every line of which I read as it appears) and have no need I know of for another outlet. Furthermore, I think that you have made it plain that you find my VDare-style racialism unhelpful; to me that remains an important topic on which undoubtedly I shall write again. Nevertheless, if you did want to post to the front page of The Economic Nationalist rather than remaining relegated to the comments column, you would be welcome to do so, my only request being please to keep profanity off the page. Please consider this a standing invitation. I think that the blog software lets me set up accounts for other editors. If the need or the wish emerges, please advise.
You would be most welcome. It seems to me that an economic nationalistic blog with two good editors, one Left, one Right, might really make some interesting reading, gradually drawing a bigger audience.
Howard,
Right, thanks for your comments here and your support as well. I can confine myself to this blog(which I type in when the spirit moves as such), but I find many of your entries interesting and can't help at times putting in my two-cents. Also, it is to help make your blog more a 'living' one, and it is my hope that Economic Nationalist gets more comments in the future from others. Some of these other blogs that have loads of commentary I think are quite underserving of their popularity. But your blog will be blogged without me and vise versa. This I know well. As for profanity, I can't recall any of the wording of my comments at Economic Nationalist that fits the label. I may have used 'crap" once as a substitute for 'shit', because many find shit profane. True, I could had used some other kinder-and-gentler scatological word for the occasion, but I feel that I am a wee bit too old to say things like 'poop' or 'doo-doo' and 'heck', 'gosh darn' when the need arises to utilize some angry colorful metaphores; substitute expletives sound so childish. But no problem: no cussin' at EN.;-)
Yes, I do find your racialism rather silly at best and detrimental to the protectionist trade cause. Though you may think that 'those people' won't support economic nationalism anyway, you can't just write them off and assume they will stick in whatever ethnic Identity they hang-out at. A black or Hispanic laid-off and 'outsourced' worker in America feels the pain of globalism as much as the white Blue Collar stiff. If they are citizens of the United States and working men and women, they're my people. If I were a so-called ethnic minority inclined to trade protectionism and came across some of your entries at EN, I'd probably be offended and turned-off from the economic-nationalist cause.I'm not an Anglo-Saxon - I'm a good down-home Heinz57 American. As an American I know that Anglo-Saxons across the Pond were often the USA's worst enemies, and not a specified identity that I feel comfortable with to relate to at all.
Nevertheless, as long as you keep hammering on the Free Traders at EN, I regard you as an ally despite what else you have on your mind and seek to publish that I may find objectionable. Just as I regard Greens, socialists and others as allies who despise globalism and know the peril of illegal immigration and the Free Trade that caused most it - though I don't buy all of their worldview, and chuckle at thier pet issues that I find largely irrevelent to the Core anyway.
Neither of our blogs will perhaps become 'significant' in the political Net world. But I want to try to make a difference at least and have it be a contributing factor, at least virtually. That's why I hold off a bit on my own scruples against some of the differences( some major)of my actual and hope-to-be fellow travelers on protectionist economics. That may be a utopian goal in itself - to have a Grand Protectionist Coalition - but I roll the dice anyway.
Best regards!
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