I clearly remember a piece of film footage from the first
Bush administration, where our Ambassader to Iraq was speaking with
Saddam Hussein. Her name was something like April Galaspie.
Saddam asked her twice, “What is the U.S. position on Arab/Arab
conflict?” Both times, she answered, “We have no intrest in
Arab/Arab conflict, but are committed to the safety of the
State of Israel.” Having already expressed his disapointment
that the Kuwaiti Government was drilling, not only 300 miles
inside of Iraqi territory, but were directional drilling
even deeper into his oil deposits with complete arrogance.
And if I remember correctly he had tried to resolve this form
of resourse theft through diplomacy? Within about 2 weeks, he
invaded Kuwait..........And the world was shocked! And of course our
existing President that had also demonstrated the ability to
say, “Read my lips, NO new taxes!”; chose the moral high
ground.................WHAT A SET-UP!
To the observant political layman........Now we observe the
building of King Rudy’s cabinet as events proceed. And “POD”
will certainly be a huge part of his foreign policy. The Guiliani Administration
will make GWB look like a choir boy, and Putin will call his
bluff!

Mr Ross, you’re a hell of a writer and I envy your youthful high-octane prose style, the kind of which I’m no longer capable as margins of grey begin to grow near my ears.

You are EXACTLY right about “intellectuals”.  The notion of “intellectuals” constituting an elite social class of opinion (which is not the same thing as being intelligent) was imported to America after around 1880, mostly by emigrants from the Russian empire.  Most of them were Jews, but that is (or should be) beside the point;
the point is that the very word “intelligentsia” is originally Russian, very alien to America’s older traditions of letters and scholarship, not to mention of qualification for political leadership.  (George Washington never went to university.)

Just a few quibbles.  Although many of Stalin’s fellow travelers in the West were internationalists, Stalin was not.  He was a nationalist, and his Western acolytes (I don’t mean his allies Churchill and FDR, I mean stupid Western socialists like the Webbs) were fools to think otherwise - and behind the scenes, Stalin laughed at them for their naivety.  Lenin was no statesman and no nationalist, but Stalin was a very adept one, the opposite of Lenin and Trotsky in many ways.  As Trotsky the internationalist was exiled and murdered while Stalin the nationalist became a Modern Age Tsar of a vast Russian empire, this should tell us something about the comparative powers, and dangers, of internationalism versus nationalism; nationalism is immensely more powerful.

But about Ahmadinejad, well, saying “more power to him” is going too far.  Recently he hosted a conference for Holocaust-deniers, including some from Western countries such as the loathsome
insects from the Institute for Historical Review - not just people who oppose the AIPAC lobby etc, but hard-core neo-Nazis who deny the Holocaust.  To hell with them and to hell with Ahmadinejad.  But saying “to hell with them” isn’t the same thing as advocating an illegal, stupid war against Iran.

Your take on the president of Columbia may well be accurate but I experienced a different act. Immediately The Blue Angel came to mind and the pathos of Professor Rath addicted to Lola Lola. Bollinger appeared an organ grinder’s emasculated monkey forced to dance and beg for coins. It seemed that the neocons must have been laughing as did the students in the final scene in which all dignity was stripped away. I pitied his abject servility. The Isreal Firsters did not even leave him the option of simple politeness, elementary hospitality. A man, Ahmadinejad, was introduced by a eunuch with blood from the fresh cuts still visible.

As to whether or not Stalin was a Russian nationalist who used Communism or a Communist who used Russian nationalism, I’d agree with the latter position.  For a start, I’d have to give some weight to what people call themselves.  I also find it quite difficult to believe that international Communism was for decades simply a vast and incredibly detailed disguise for Russian nationalism. As Churchill put it in another context, “The disguise is most convincing”.  It convinces me.

But it must also be added, as Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn frequently observed, nationalism and internationalism are not opposites, but both forms of collectivism, one shading into the other. Whenever a nation seeks to dominate others and impose its values on them, it has already become internationalist and not just nationalist.  One can see this in the case of the US more clearly than in the case of the USSR.  Between American nationalism and liberal internationalism there is a distinction without a difference.  Bush is the poster boy for both, but simply following in the footsteps of Lincoln, Wilson and FDR.

“But about Ahmadinejad, well, saying “more power to him” is going too far.  Recently he hosted a conference for Holocaust-deniers...”

Posted by John Ball on Nov 13, 2007.

To the extent that the Jewish holocaust is defined as an unique event, to the extent it is defined as a supremely malevolent use of scapegoating, to the extent it is defined as an atrocity against a harmless people, it is a myth.  Genocide is as old as The Old Testament, the Nazis remembered the role of the World Zionist Organization in Germany’s defeat in the Great War, and if we still believe Zionists are harmless, just ask the people of Iraq how they feel, or the Palestinians who are being eradicated by Zionist Israel.

Let me jump in here with one little-bitty post before this thread – as usual – mutates into a rigorously tedious inquest of all things dense and Catholic:

While it may be true that Norman Podhoretz is now a gibbering old buffoon glimpsing Ahmadinejad in every rain cloud, he and his round-table pals trip-wired this blundering nation into the booby trap of Iraq – all at the service of another country.

The Iraq War looks like insanity to us, but to neoconservatives, led by that old tub-thumping witch doctor Podhoretz, it’s “mission accomplished.”

There is something terminally enervating about these so-called Neo-Conservative Intellectuals. They put me of mind of a locked library where everyone is aware there might be great stores of knowledge inside but it’s been locked up anyhow for good reason. Crusading Jews, Christians....it really does not matter a whit to these Neo-Gomer Pyle Templars and their substitution of “Islamofascism” for Relics of the Cross and the Holy Grail. Simply put, their vitriol and paranoia sells and sells big, always has.  They are the reliable factotums for a multinational arms industry that has an insatiably prurient interest in finding hazard everywhere. Unfortunately, with this current round of Empire vs. Non-Empire, hazard is produced with the cheerful regularity of a Ford Assembly Line. Would that internal combustion engines could run on manic invective....then again, Greenland might melt in a fortnight.

Too bad they are what pass for “intellectuals” in this petulant age. What I wouldn’t do for a good old fashioned Benny Devoto or Mencken or Dorothy Parker quipping that she was “too f****ing busy, or vice versa”. A few days ago, as reported or referred to by Antiwar.com , one of the geniuses in the Department of Homeland Security asserted that we Americans need to adjust our definition of “privacy” to meet the demands of the current “age of teror”. Without a merest hint of irony in his voice, he asserted that it as more important that the government protect our anonymity than it was to preserve our right to privacy.  This reminded me of Devoto challenging J.Edgar Hoover to a Public Debate “anytime, anywhere”. I don’t believe anybody in our own polite and idiotic age said anything at all to our Government Protector of Anonymity and the Pursuit of Defendyness.

At least the thinking mans drinkers and typers of an earlier America had a well developed sense of humor, something in critical lack of supply these days. My ma Babs used to say “a good sense of humor was a sure sign of intelligence”. By this measure and with the Charlatans Rudy and Hillary at large, this may go down as the absolute stupidest generation in America...driven there completely on purpose instead of drifting there by happy accident like we used to.

And by the way, guffawing horse laughs on cue or leering grins do not a sense of humor make.

Ahenjihad actually holds very little power and Podman surely knows that. I so tire of reactionary nationalists/internationalists and their eternal warfare, which is eternal debt, for the salavation [enserfment] of mankind.

I so tire of reactionary nationalists/internationalists and their eternal warfare, which is eternal debt, for the salvation [enserfment] of mankind.

Speaking for myself, as a card-carrying Puritan, I don’t want any of that.  I want to be live free without some idiot trying to redistribute my wealth, brainwash my kids or have me re-educated.  My little corner of civilization has a right to exist, whether David Brooks, Sid Crankypants or Alan Dershowitz like it or not.

I’m not a card-carrying Puritan, but otherwise I actually agree with ”I don’t want any of that [nationalism posing as internationalism, or nationalism whatsoever].  I want to be live free [i.e. free to live] without some idiot trying to redistribute my wealth, brainwash my kids or have me re-educated.  My little corner of civilization has a right to exist.”

Sounds like The League of the South to me.  Think about joining our “little corner of civilization”.  (Just remember that we also celebrate Stephen Mallory and Judah P. Benjamin.)

Just remember that we also celebrate Stephen Mallory and Judah P. Benjamin.

One was secretary of the navy and the other was secretary of state.  Some celebration.  And I bet the LoS must love it when you stand up and berate them about the legacy of Nathan Bedford Forrest. Besides, I don’t agree with romanticizing the WBTS because it teaches the wrong lesson: militarism.  If Dixie means more blood and death for Social Democracy, never mind. The South won’t rise again until it stops loving the warfare state and gets back to its Reformed roots.  Oh, and it needs to bring back real country music instead of that sissy stuff they play on the radio these days.

Ramus I am going to drink beer and play cards with a bunch of Dutch Calvinists and a few Methodists at a deer hunting camp saturday.Are you a phoney non drinker, like most of the Hollanders, I know.

Are you a phoney non drinker, like most of the Hollanders, I know.

I’m not Dutch, so I’m not much.

@ Kirt, “...I’d have to give some weight to what people call themselves.”

Really?  So, would that mean you give weight to people who call themselves “transgendered?” Some men call themselves women, but I don’t give much weight to their claims, especially if they have deep voices and big Adams Apples.

I didn’t say that what people call themselves is necesssarily decisive and certainly not if you are dealing with something like sex which is both either/or and genetically determined.  Even so, a man who calls himself a woman and relentlessly maintains a disguise as a woman is certainly conveying important information about his state of mind.  Maybe he really considers himself a woman.

Where you are dealing with something like political ideology, which is determined completely by what is in a person’s mind and not by genetics, how do you tell that a person who calls himself a Communist, who is associated with Communist organizations from his youth, and who becomes the recognized leader of world Communism, promoting Communism on a global basis is actually a nationalist in disguise?  It seems to me, John, that this stems from your own ideological position, probably derived from Lukacs, that all politics is nationalism beneath the surface.

“how do you tell that a person who calls himself a Communist, who is associated with Communist organizations from his youth, and who becomes the recognized leader of world Communism, promoting Communism on a global basis is actually a nationalist in disguise?”

Oh, inventing a Frankensteinian doctrine called “socialism in one country” is a pretty good sign that Stalin was a nationalist rather than a Marxist.

“Socialism in one country” was simply a slogan to deceive possible foreign enemies.  During the entire time of “socialism in one country”, Communists working under Stalin’s secret service were busy subverting Germany, Spain, China and many other countries, their tentacles reaching as far as Brazil.  So far there have been about a thousand Christians martyred by the Reds in Spain who have been beatified or canonized by the Catholic Church.  Stalin’s secret police ran the Spanish Republican government, destroyed rival factions, recruited about 100,000 foreign Reds for the international brigades to fight for Communism in Spain and made off with the Spanish treasury when the Reds finally lost.  How would one interpret the Spanish Civil War in terms of Russian nationalism?  Socialism in one country - yeah right.

You have it Kirt,socialism in one country my ass, what was the commintern?

My little corner of civilization has a right to exist, whether David Brooks, Sid Crankypants or Alan Dershowitz like it or not.
Posted by Peter Ramus on Nov 13, 2007

I concur. I dont like being prosyletized by politics or religion. I know my God and I know myself and I dont force either on anyone.

@Kurt Higdon, one plank of Cultural Marxism is de-racination.  What do you call the opposite if in your opinion “nationalism” is just as evil as internationalism? 

If internationalism by its very essence seeks the destruction of nations---what is the program to defend race/nation/ethnicity against the deconstructionism of internationalism?

Please enlighten me Kirt Higdon.

“Socialism in One Country” was a 1976 pastoral letter by Comrade Cardinal Cushing.

Anything that becomes an “ism” becomes an idol.  Nationalism shades into internationalism and becomes an idol by seeking the destruction or sujugation of all nations but its own.  “Seek first the Kingdom of God” and everything else will be given in due measure.

“How would one interpret the Spanish Civil War in terms of Russian nationalism?”

Orwell saw through it; read his “Homage to Catalonia.” The Russian Communist fifth columnists in Spain actually undermined and betrayed any Spanish socialists who didn’t toe Moscow’s party line; the Kremlin’s concern was Russia’s perceived national interest, not any brotherhood of “international socialism.”
Meanwhile Stalin became a virtual ally of Hitler and supplied Germany with materials the Germans used to bomb London.  See also the character of the German Communist “Little Loewy” (fictional, but based on historical persons and incidents) in Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon”, one of many who were sold out by the so-called “international communists” of the USSR for the sake of Russia’s perceived national interest.

I agree with Kirt that all isms are idols, but some idols are more seductive to the minds and emotions of men than others.  Hardly anyone except for a handful of intellectual fanatics like Lenin and Trotsky have ever really believed passionately in “class consciousness” or in internationalism, because - and don’t most of our commenters here agree? - loyalty to “nation” (or “kith and kin” to use the newly fashionable phrase) is deep seated in Human nature, for good AND ill.  But economic “class consciousness” and international solidarity is an intellectual abstraction with very limited appeal.

Why do you think Stalin replaced the socialist “Internationale” with a new, rousing Soviet National Anthem appealing to the national consciousness, principally of Russians, and with a few token words about other Soviet nationalities all led by Great Russia?
Here are the lyrics in English:

“Unbreakable Union of freeborn Republics,
Great Russia has welded forever to stand.
Created in struggle by will of the people,
United and mighty, our Soviet land!”

Granted, the succeeding lyrics mention Lenin and “Communism” (how could they not, lest the Communist Party lose its claim to legitimacy?), but there is a powerful shift in emphasis toward the Motherland, and to the primacy of Russia.
That ain’t what Marx would have written, nor would Trotsky, a Jew whose loyalty to “Holy Mother Russia”, well, didn’t exist at all.
Russian nationalism came back with Stalin, Trotsky’s enemy.

PS, as one English wag said upon hearing news of the Hitler-Stalin pact, “Now all the ISms are WASms!”

Then basically what you are saying, John, is that Stalin and all his successors right down to the collapse of the USSR considered the establishment of Communism throughout the world to be essential to Russian national interest.  Otherwise, why would a Russian care what kind of economic organization or government Spain, let alone Brazil or Cuba had?  And, of course, Russia itself maintained a Communist government and economic organization. 

It thus strikes me that saying Stalin was a Russian nationalist rather than a Communist is a distinction without a difference.  Much like American nationalism and liberal democratic internationalism or French nationalism and Jacobinism.  The main difference between the US on the one hand and France and Russia on the other is that the US never had any national tradition that wasn’t “propositional” - based on the “self-evident” (hence universal) “truths” of the Declaration of Independence.  France and Russia on the other hand had many layers of pre-modern and pre-enlightenment tradition that needed to be destroyed by the revolutionaries - whether you term these revolutionaries nationalists or internationalists.  It is certainly true that nationalism as an ideology is as much an enemy of national tradition - not to mention local tradition - as internationalism is.

@ Kirt,

“Then basically what you are saying, John, is that Stalin and all his successors right down to the collapse of the USSR considered the establishment of Communism throughout the world to be essential to Russian national interest.”

No that’s not what I’m saying.  I’m saying that Stalin and his successors pretended to care about “Communism” as a ruse to sustain their own Party’s legitimacy in the USSR, and to dupe useful idiots in other countries to collaborate with them.

(And gloss:  Castro didn’t become pro-Soviet because he cared about “Communism”; he allied himself with the USSR, and called himself a “Communist”, because he was anti-American.)

But I mostly agree with you that both nationalism and internationalism are enemies of true patriotism - a word which you didn’t use, but I’m suggesting it to you as an alternative to both nationalism AND internationalism.

Since the pretense of caring about Communism consisted of establishing and supporting Communist governments wherever possible, then (to paraphrase Churchill), the pretense is most convincing.  Put another way, what exactly would Stalin have done differently had he actually been a Communist rather than a Russian nationalist in deep cover?  And don’t say he would not have betrayed other socialists or made agreements with non-Communists - this was stock in trade of the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky as well.  Indeed Lenin’s New Economic Plan was far more of a retreat from Communism than anything Stalin ever did.

@ Kirt, “Put another way, what exactly would Stalin have done differently had he actually been a Communist rather than a Russian nationalist in deep cover?  And don’t say he would not have betrayed other socialists or made agreements with non-Communists”

Okay, good question.  Here is what Stalin would have done differently if he had really believed in international Communism:

1.  If Stalin had really believed in Marxist-Leninist-Communism, first of all he would not have created the terror-famine throughout the USSR and especially in Ukraine (in the early 1930s); rather he would have strived to create more sense of “international brotherhood” between the Kremlin and the workers and farmers of Ukraine.  But he did the opposite - the main target of Stalin’s terror-famine was Ukraine, and Ukrainian nationalists - because Stalin wanted to bring the Ukrainian nationalists to heel, in the service of Great Russia.

2.  Kirt, my friend, you said, “And don’t say he would not have betrayed other socialists or made agreements with non-Communists - this was stock in trade of the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky as well.”

My answer?  NO IT WASN’T!  Or rather, Lenin and the early Bolsheviks did NOT compromise with non-Communists in the same WAY that Stalin did!
Under Lenin, the Russian Empire was diminished.  Lenin gave away vast portions of the former Russian Empire, to his (Lenin’s) bloody German friends.  The Russian Empire LOST a lot of land under Lenin - because Lenin was not a statesman; Lenin was an ideologue.  Then, under Stalin, the Russian Empire RETRIEVED its former possessions.
So, Kirt, I do not accept your posited premise about Stalin making deals with non-Communists.  Yes, Stalin made deals with non-Communists - especially with Hitler - but Stalin did so like a statesman whose aim was to defend and expand the borders of the Russian Empire, the OPPOSITE of what Lenin did!

3.  If Stalin had been SERIOUS about “Communism”, he would have made an alliance, or at least a treaty, with AMERICA AND BRITAIN in 1939, instead of with Nazi Germany - because there were a HELL of a lot more believers in “Communism” in America and Britain in 1939, than there were in Germany.  (Well - and I’m saying this with an English accent - all of the GERMAN Communists were either dead or in prison in 1939, you know… :-)

Thus, if Stalin and his terrified government of old fashioned Russians, had REALLY cared about “International Communism” in 1939, then they would have carried on trying to convert Britain and American to “Communism” - because there were many more Communists in Britain and America than in Germany in 1939 - instead of making a deal with Hitler, the professed “anti-communist”.

But at any rate, Kirt, I enjoy these discussions with you, and your sharp wits help me to sharpen mine, and I think you and I are on the same side at the end of the day.  May the Peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, Kirt, my friend.

Zionist Jews have the same love/hate relationship with America that Woodrow Wilson and Bush, Jr. had/have with their daddies.  Israel owes it creation and continuing existence to American support, and therein lies the love, but therein also lies the hate, because the self-proclaimed Chosen People owe the existence of their country to a nation of Gentiles, whom they despise, as they despised Him who brought salvation to the non-Hebrews.  Solution?  Destroy any vestige of Christianity in the U.S., which tactic is the opposite of labeling something which is vast and incomprehensible to the uneducatd and unintelligent, in order that they may focus their feeble thought processes on it.  A good example is the term Islamofascism.  Abe Foxman is Zionism’s point man in their struggle to destroy Christianity.  Does this seem a rationale policy to you, dear reader?  No?  But then, you are not a madman obsessed with a fictional past.

Kirt, I am still confused. You say, “All ‘isms are idols’. So, John Ball uses the term “patriotism”.  Isn’t Patriotism, an ‘ism, and hence an idol?  Yet, you didn’t criticize him! Kirt, What do you label a man that stands up against de-racination?  What? If one works to preserve his race from disappearance, what is that Kirt? Is not Catholicism an ‘ism Kirt?  Why isn’t Catholicism condemned? Doesn’t Catholicism portray a Catholic way of doing things?  So what is wrong with Nationalism? or is there another proper name? or Kirt you are simply a liberal Catholic and have adopted Cultural Marxism?

John, I am certainly scratching my head that you call Stalin’s collectivisation of agriculture (which incidentally caused famine throughout the USSR, although it was more accute in the Ukraine) evidence that Stalin was NOT a Communist.  As far as Lenin’s concessions to the Germans are concerned, they were dictated by the necessities of the Russian military collapse and the unopposed German advance.  And according to what I have read, Stalin wanted an alliance with Britain and France in 1939 (the US was not then shopping for an alliance) but Britain did not want such an alliance.  So Stalin instead allied with the Nazis.  While the alliance was a smart move, he was certainly naive to trust Hitler to the extent he did.  But this says nothing about either communism or nationalism; it just shows that even paranoids can have areas of naivite.

Mr. Wheeler, I would say that patriotism as an ideology pretty much equals nationalism and is used to sell nationalism to the unwary.  Regretably even the term patriot has become compromised as (for example) by the slogan “Be a patriot; kill a priest” used by the anti-Communist assassins of El Salvador.  And while the term Catholicism is used by some popular Catholic writers, it is not part of the official language of the Church.  Indeed Pope Pius XII stated that the term Catholicism was “neither customary nor adequate” for conveying what we mean by our faith.  Even the use of Catholic as a noun is a modern (i.e. post-Reformation) innovation.  In Papal encyclicals, members of the Church are referred to as “the faithful in Christ”.  The use of Catholic as a noun has led to abuses, the most significant of which is giving Protestants the openning to claim that Catholics are not really Christian.

Kirt, what do you call the program of resisting Communist/cultural marxism ideology of deracination? What do you call somebody who defends race?

“What do you call somebody who defends race?” WLindsayWheeler

An idiot.  If race is a genetically programmed group of physical characteristics which humans have always had, it’s unlikely to ever disappear and hence needs no defense.  If it’s just an ideological driven set of classifications which everyone must fit into whether they want to or not, then it’s just another stupid ideology and deserves no defense.

I have to agree with Kirt here and also like to add a question for John Ball, what did Stalin do to promote Russian culture and traditions?  It seems to me all he did was to destroy them not preserve them.