Who is a Fascist?

.


[Fill in blank] is a fascist, so don’t listen to what they say.

The argumentum ad hominem is attacking a person rather than the arguemnt they are presenting. It is always invalid on grounds of irrelevance, even if the accusation is true. For example “SoandSo makes that statement because he is a 'gruby worn and a low life'” Even if the accusation is true and SoandSo is a 'gruby worm and a low life', what they said is right or wrong on it’s own merits. SoandSo’s status (true or false) as a 'gruby worm and alow life' is irrelevant to what they are saying.


Since WWII, it seems that everyone’s favorite argumentum ad hominem is the argumentum ad hitlerum. That person is a Nazi or Facist or something similar. It has been used for so long against so many people in so many different situations, unrelated to the historical context, that the term means “someone I don’t like.’ It communcates no real knowledge about the person or what they are saying. Even, on the chance of random probability, it is most likley false. The worst part about this is that there is such a thing as Fascist ideology. Persons supporting this ideology, if they avoid certain keywords, can easly escape recoginiton in all the false claims. The substance of fascist ideas could be presented with differernt terms and not be noticed by the unsuspecting. It would not be surprising for fascists to be loudest in accusing their opponents of being fascists

I went to google to see how wide spread this phenomenon is. I made entries in different comibnations of “Is (was) a fascist (nazi)” to see what I would get. The following is a small sample. This is just items that appeared in the sample text Google displays. To be fair while some are serious, some are humor, and some are defending someone against the accusation, which of course means the accusation was made. Some show much study and thought, some are ignorant and thoughtless.


Dobson is a Fascist
LePen was a fascist
Brigitte Bardot is a fascist!
Hitler was a fascist
To modern-day Leftists anybody they disagree with is a "fascist”

Every Jew-baiter, every Catholic hater, is a fascist
Santa is a fascist!
China is a fascist country
My Tivo is a fascist
Fidel Ramos is a fascist

Peter Singer is a fascist.
Zarqawi is a "fascist"
Heidegger was a professed fascist
Richie Rich is a fascist!
Bill Clinton is A Fascist

Hillary Clinton is a fascist
[Hugo] Chavez is a fascist
Hillary Duff Is A NAZI!
Janie Is A Nazi
Everybody's a Nazi

John F Kennedy was a Nazi
Ted Kennedy is a nazi
[Ward] Churchill is a fascist,
Reno is a fascist,
Castro is a fascist

Saddam was a fascist
Your Dog Is a Fascist
Ezra Pound was a fascist
Bin Ladin is a fascist
Diana Mosley was a fascist

I was a fascist
[Winston] Churchill was a fascist
Roosevelt was a Fascist
Harry Potter is a Nazi
Los Angeles Shooter is a Nazi

Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. was a Nazi
Marx was a Nazi
Stalin was a nazi
Mao was a nazi
Che was a fascist

Heinlein's a fascist idiot
Bobby Fischer is a Nazi
Dean is a Fascist
Al Gore is a fascist
John F. Kerry is a fascist


And Crumpy Blog provides the best comment on the most popular “ is a Fascist (or Nazi)” response


- namely -


“Bush is a Fascist”

. . . I don't like people who pick a political stance because it's in fashion to do so. I saw a person wearing a Bush=fascist shirt. I asked her in a non-confrontational way, "Why do you think Bush is a fascist?" The response was, "Because of the stuff he does". I inquired "what stuff is that?" The response was "the Patriot Act". Playing dumb I asked, "What is the Patriot Act?" She said, "it takes our rights away." When asked what rights does it take away she said, "Freedom of the Press, and religion." OK, at this point I know she didn't know what the hell she was talking about so I simply asked, "What is a fascist?" She again said "Bush." So I said "Besides Bush what is a fascist?" A blank look came over her face. After about 30 seconds I asked her "Well can you give me an example of a fascist other than Bush". Her answer was "the English guy, Mel Gibson, and the guy on the radio". At this point I wanted to see how far I could take it so I asked "How about that guy who lead Italy during World War II....what was his name....Benito Mussolini?" The response I got floored me. "No, he was cool" she said.


I would like to respectfully submit that there seems to be a serious general knowledge problem in the fields of History and Political Science.

John Bolton and Edmund Burke

One of today’s hot button issues is the nomination of John Bolton as US Ambassador to the UN. “The National Interest” magazine has republished and article written by Mr. Bolton for their Winter 1997/1998 issue: The Prudent Irishman: Edmund Burke's Realism.

The article points out different attitudes regarding US Foreign policy since the fall of the Berlin wall and looks to 18th century philosopher Edmund Burke for suggestions on how to proceed.



In view of the polices of the current administration the first two paragraphs are interesting.

Today, Cold War-era anti-communists argue among themselves--and the disagreements are not about tactics. Let us be frank: some have become near isolationists. Others enthusiastically espouse Woodrow Wilson's view that the world needs to be made safe for democracy and its family of values. Some of the latter seem to long for a new crusade to keep America at the top of its game, if nothing else. Then again there are those who see the world as still dangerous, but far more opaquely so than it was during the clearer days of the Cold War. They seek an interests-based foreign policy grounded in a concrete agenda of protecting particular peoples and territories, defending open trade and commercial relations around the world, and advancing a commonality of interests with our allies.

Finding myself in this third school, I often turn for guidance to that political philosopher whose understanding of the interplay of interests and values remains unsurpassed. Edmund Burke's insights into civil society seem strikingly apposite today to American foreign policy. Among those are his reliance on the accretion of experience and reasoning from empirical reality, his abhorrence of elevating abstract principles into a theology, and his fear of driving policy on the basis of metaphysics.

The second school he mentions is similar to the post 9/11 policies of the Bush Administration. But Mr. Bolton sees himself as part of the third school, which is more attuned to the major conserative critics of the Bush administration. Some commentators have suggested that the appointment is a kick upstairs to a better title in a less significant job. If so, this could stem from the underlying differences with the majority opinion of the administration.



Strong opposition to four movements characterized Edmund Burkes career. The first three were the British Imperial policy in America, India, and Ireland. This has gained him approving selective quotes from left leaning commentators. The fourth was his ardent opposition to the French revolution, which gains him approving selective quotes from right leaning commentators. Both groups often have trouble with Burke because of this seeming contradiction. Bolton sees the four campaigns by Burke not as a contradiction, but deriving from a coherent worldview of protecting individual liberty. The colonial governements create obvious poroblems of indivdual liberty.

. . . [the] French Revolution and its progenitors were theorists who knew so little of reality that they could not conceive of the consequences of their ideas. He described them as "fanatics: independent of any interest, which, if it operated alone, would make them much more tractable; they are carried with such a headlong rage towards every desperate trial that they would sacrifice the whole human race to the slightest of their experiments." Specifically, these philosophers simply did not care about people as individuals:

A common conservative criticism of the UN can be summarized by saying the UN advocates policies that are strong on pure theory but with little understanding of the actual effect on the real people. To the extent he has discretion, I think that he will lobby against UN polices he sees as harming individual liberty or where he is not confident that they will actually benefit the people they are supposed to help.



If he is confirmed, I doubt Mr. Bolton’s tenure as UN Ambassador will be boring.

Earth Day

Today is Earth Day, which was founded as part to the fight against the dreaded scourge of Global Cooling. : -)

! ! ! HABEMUS PAPAM ! ! !

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger has been elected Pope!


V. Let us pray for our Sovereign Pontiff Benedict XVI.

R. The Lord preserve him and give him life, and make him blessed upon the earth, and deliver him not up to the will of his enemies.






Note: For more information in the side bar there is link to the Ratzinger Fan Club, and also to Christopher Blosser’s Against the Grain blog which is the blog for the Ratzinger Fan Club.

H Company, 2d Battalion, 24th Marines

! ! ! Welcome Home Guys ! ! !

Rwanda and Darfur Compared

From the German Law Journal HT: Milts File

An excellent article

Genocidal Politics and Racialization of Intervention: From Rwanda to Darfur and Beyond

From the Conclusion,

“My modest aim in this paper has been to explore to what extent, if at all, the Rwandan genocide positively affected international response to similar or comparable tragedies in Africa. That is, whether the international community would react any differently today. Using the ongoing Darfur crisis, the paper demonstrates that international attitude to Rwandan genocide was the norm and not the exception as far as responses to tragedies in Africa are concerned.”

The Battle That Stopped Rome

Somewhere east of the Rhine, Province of Lower Germany, September, 9 AD.

It’s stopped raining for now. Sixty pounds of equipment are not lighter for being wet. The Legion marches or rather slops along the trail. A swamp to the right, a forested hill to the left, the ground would be soft in sunny weather. At least they are the lead legion; several thousand pairs of feet haven’t already chewed up the ground. Eight hours marching yesterday, five today and who knows how many until they get to a place to build a camp. Four or five more days of sore muscles, aching backs, and maybe a fight to get home.

The Centurions are calling to
“Keep formation;” “how, the trail is barely wide enough.”
“Watch your sectors;” “right, this is allied country, who but poor legionnaire would be out in this weather.”
“A perfect place for an ambush;” “come on, the auxiliaries already cleared the road or we wouldn’t be here.”
"At least they aren’t saying to unsling shields and weapons."



War cries break the air.
A shower of javelins.
Even without orders the well rehearsed drill tries to assert itself:
unsling shields and weapons, drop packs, move off the road, form a shield wall.
The javelins rip though the ranks. When they do not hit flesh they remain stuck in the equipment so it can’t be moved without hitting another solider.
Slipping in the mud, tripping over bodies, climbing over packs they struggle to reach the side of the road and form a line.
Another yell; every warrior in Germania swarms out of the woods.
The shield wall never forms.
Those who don’t die outright, mostly die of exsanguation or hypothermia.




Book Review:
The Battle that Stopped Rome
Peter S Wells
W. H. Norton 2003

Kalkriese museum

In 9 AD a Roman Army of three legions and nine cohorts of auxiliariescommanded by Publius Quinctilius Varus was destroyed in the “Teutoburger Wald” by the German leader Arminius some place in northern Germany. The event has come down in history as one of the "Great Battles" but where it was fought was unknown. In 1989 the site of this battle was found. This book is a beginners Archeological/Anthropological/Historical study of the battle using the new information.



The battle took place at the base of what is now called Kalkriese hill about 10 miles north of Osnabruck in Lower Saxony, Germany. The archeological remains combined with the sketchy information in the sources allow for several reasonable reconstructions of the battle. The most notable discovery is that the ambush had been planned for a long time. The trail as it would have existed at the time would have been a narrow stretch of sand and clay soil along the base of the hill just wide enough for the Roman column to march. A sod wall had been built along the uphill side of the road and the vegetation allowed to grow so it looked like part of nature from the trail. In Wells reconstruction, the attackers hid behind the wall until the lead legion was parallel and then attacked with javelins followed by a charge. With a small amount of warning a Roman column with an unexpected enemy on the flank could easily drop it’s packs, grab its weapons, and form a line on the threatened flank. Once they had formed a shield wall they had a tactical superiority over any possible enemy. Arminius, the German commander had commanded an auxiliary cohort in the Roman Army and a number of his key subordinates had also served with the Romans. They set an ambush that placed a legion in the worst possible situation, no warning time and no room to form ranks. The wall was the length of one legion. My vignette above is most likely what happened to the lead legion, about 4000 to 5000 men. The Roman commander considered Arminius to be an ally and accepted his suggestion for a route.

A modern reconstruction of the Kalkriese "narrows" at the Kalkriese
Museum. In front, the bog; then, a small strip of land,
and finally the slopes of the mountain, fortified with a wall.

The battle stopped Augustus’s attempt to push the Roman boundary to the Elbe. A larger Army was needed to garrison both the Rhine and Danube lines than would have been required for the Elbe line. Since the Army was larger and closer to Rome it could more easily use it's strength in electing Emperors, changing for the worse the state of Roman politics. The difference of several hundred years of Roman rule still is a cultural dividing line for many things in Europe. The Reformation/Counter Reformation ended with territories close to this line. Whether beer or wine is usually had with dinner also follows this line. Depending on your point of view it was either a major defeat to European unification or a key event in the forming of the German nation. Actually, I think both are correct.

In twelve easy to read chapters with basic maps and some good photographs Dr. Wells describes the events leading up to the battle, the battle, and it’s aftermath. It is especially strong on the archeology of the site and the anthropology of northern Germany. Since I already know a good bit of Roman military history I learned the most from his description of the peoples of northern Germany. His descriptions make the German participants alive rather than the stereotypes that most histories make them out of ignorance. It did much to provide context for other reading on the subject.

Not a military historian, the Dr. Wells made extensive research to understand the event as military history. He almost succeeded. He did make good use of John Keegans the Face of Battle in his analysis. His conclusion that the other two legions were destroyed with in an hour of the first is imimplausible, doesn’t agree with the ancient sources, is not tactically sound, and seems unlikely from the topography. The archeological evidence he describes does not require it and would support other conclusions. It seems more likely that the ancient account is close to correct, these legions had the time to form ranks and then establish a fortified camp that evening, then were destroyed piecemeal as they tried to fight their way home. Other more probalble theories assume the battle began several days earlier and the Romans were driven into this trap and finally destroyed.

The book is intended as an introduction for those without background, and I think especially to introduce people to his favorite field of Anthropology. In this he succeeds admirably. The reader with more background will find the book interesting, while wishing for a more extensive and critical examination and analysis of the battle itself.

See Also


Book Review: Quest for The Lost Legions by Tony Benn
Book Review: Rome‘s Greatest Defeat by Adrian Murdoch
In my opnion, this is the best book in English on the subject. I appended my analysis of the battle.

The Advance Guard Fiction

Related
Book Review: Eagle in the Snow
Book Review: The Fall of the Roman Empire

The pictures are from Livius website were made by Marco Prins and Jona Lendering, and can be downloaded and used for non-commercial purposes, but you have to acknowledge Livius.

Updated 18 May 2007

Heads we Lose, Tails we Lose

John Rosenthal of Transatlantic Intelligencer reports that the proposed European Constitution is being attacked as an American Plot ™ and that the opposition is also an American Plot ™!

I tried to read the proposed constitution a while back, there seems to be an awful lot of noise for a constitution with 20 year shelf life. It is way to top heavy of on what should be legislative items. It contains extremely cumbersome procedures, which should keep lawyers in full employment. I hope the Charter of Human Rights is using formalisms common in Europe, which have well defined meanings, I’m not sure what it means in operational terms.

The European Union does need a good constitution. But if this one passes I hope they realize it is their own doing and not an American Plot ™.

S(*(^%&^%$# Computers

It seems that TM Lutas of Flit TM is having a problem with 404 errors. Check it out.

Such a Night.

We wait for Karol Wojtyla to go home to his Savior. A great man in many ways, but he never forgot that he was called to be a priest; to bring Christ to the world. That he did. Everything else was secondary.

Pray for him in this hour of trial.