Tag: Nazi

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folly general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies

Include/​Exclude

Milo Yiannopoulis, Democratic Socialists of America, Churchill Tavern, New York, Nazi

The right of free assembly is central to a free society. Not everyone understands this.

Last week, conservative/“cultural libertarian” provocateur Milo Yiannopoulis went into the Churchill Tavern in New York to dine with fellow gay journalist Chadwick Moore. 

Also in the establishment? The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. When the socialists noticed Milo they stood up, faced him, and shouted at him, chanting “Nazi scum, get out!”

Milo is not a Nazi, but his past gentle treatment of the alt-​right counts as “Nazi” on the left.*

The left has been pushing for an inclusivist** reading of the right of free assembly for decades. You see, state laws in the South, prior to 1964’s Civil Rights Act, allowed and enforced white business discrimination against African-​Americans, such as refusing service and accommodations. Leftists argue that there is no right to refuse service or exclude customers; they strenuously criticize those libertarians and conservatives who argue that a right to associate implies a right not to associate … giving them no credit for long opposing laws requiring discrimination. 

Yet now we see many on the left banding together to deny others their free association rights by exclusionary tactics.

This was a group of customers, of course, so this is more similar to antifa violence than business discrimination. But Brooklyn politicians echo the logic, now proudly denying free assembly rights to NRA members — on ideological grounds.

Mob action for exclusion? Politicians siding with the mob?

There’s a word for this — fascismo.

Or, in the vulgar tongue, “Nazi scum.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks articulates this point — Milo’s insistence that he is not alt-​right carrying no weight, apparently.

** Rather than rule-​of-​law liberal, or libertarian.

 

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Categories
Accountability ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies

One Way to Do It

Philip K. Dick, Nazi, ovens, ashes, smoke, abortion, crematorium, camp

While reading CBS’s recent story on Iceland’s success at reducing the number of Down syndrome cases, I was reminded of the Amazon Prime series Man in the High Castle.

The show, based on the celebrated alternative history novel by Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982), explores a timeline wherein the Axis powers won World War II. The United States is divided between the Greater Nazi Reich and the Empire of Japan.

In one scene, one of the protagonists — a hero? a villain? — is stalled on a Midwest country roadside. He smells something in the air. Smoke. Ash.

The very American sheriff explains: it is a local hospital destroying defective humans. The weak, the sick, the disabled. 

And we, the viewers, recoil: how evil. Nazis actually execute the weak, the sick, the disabled. Well, they did, in history, not just fiction.

But, as CBS explains, the reason Down syndrome cases are disappearing all over the place, and in Iceland most of all, is not a new cure. Chalk it up to the rise of prenatal screenings. We see fewer Down syndrome people because, before birth, they are executed. Aborted.

In our non-​fictional timeline, many Americans are incensed that a few folks proclaiming to be Nazis have been “allowed” to demonstrate in public. 

Nazism is evil. I agree.

But how do these morally horrified people react about the very “progressive” and culturally acceptable practice of killing the unwanted?

Think I’ve gone over the top, have abused a revered author to make a point alien to his own? Well, please read Dick’s “The Pre-​Persons,” a story about abortion, way post-​natal … until the age at which a person can understand algebra.*

Quite the moral calculation we make, eh?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* That could mean it’s open season for murder as states are moving to drop algebra requirements because so many fail to master the subject. 

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ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

The Great Diversion

Nazi, Civil War, soldiers, dead soldiers, Charlottesville, antifa

Though the breakdown of civil debate seems new, the subjects are old. We are actually talking about Nazis, again. Nazi death counts. And the Confederacy. The former defeated by my father’s generation, the latter defeated several generations earlier.

Why?

Because talking about the future would require actual thought. It’s easier to fight over the past, over symbols of the past.

That is why there was a Charlottesville debacle. It is about a statue, a monument to dead soldiers featuring the Confederacy’s General Robert E. Lee. And what it means. The “Unite the Right” rally was set in Charlottesville because of the city council’s decision to remove it. 

It is interesting, though, that the event did not unite “the Right.” Conservative and even many alleged “alt-​right” groups refused to participate. 

But “the Left” seems more united than before. If you focus on past racism and the persistence of Nazi and Confederate symbology, it’s pretty easy to agree. I agree. 

And yet, I take a step back, and remember that those monuments do not have the univocal racist meaning attributed to them. They were intended to heal wounds.*

Now they open up old ones.

And yet this is all a diversion. We are facing a major set of crises that could lead to war, depression, chaos, and (possibly) worse. But we are not now handling them because we are fighting over symbols of the past.

This may be a very human thing to do.

But it is not smart.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* At least 350,000 young American men died wearing Confederate uniforms in the Civil War, and half a million Union soldiers are believed to have died directly from their war wounds. Today’s population is ten times greater, so adjusted for today it would be eight million deaths. That is a lot of searing wounds.

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Categories
Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility U.S. Constitution

Saturday’s Violence

police, violence, Charlottesville, white supremacist, Nazi, protest, counter protest, law and order

After delivering the final address at the Liberty International World Conference in Puerto Rico, Friday night, I learned that there had been violent clashes between white nationalists and counter-​demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia. 

A dozen people required medical treatment after being sprayed with mace. 

Then, after traveling to the airport with new friends from Kazakhstan, China, and socialist-​torn Venezuela, I began my eight-​hour trek home. I had the subject for my weekend column, I decided: the lack of reports of even one arrest. 

Last I checked, dousing folks with a chemical agent was a crime. 

“Men in combat gear, some waring [sic] bicycle and motorcycle helmets and carrying clubs and sticks and makeshift shields,” the Washington Post reported as I landed for my connecting flight home, “fought each other on the downtown streets, with little police interference.”

By the time I touched down in Washington, DC, James Field had driven his car into a crowd of counter-​protesters, killing Heather Heyer and seriously wounding many others. A searing and sobering event.

My column, mostly written in transit, focused on the police response to political violence. From Trump rallies last year to the events at UC-​Berkeley that “shut down” planned speeches … to attacks on Charles Murray and others at Middlebury College … to this Saturday’s events in Charlottesville, policing has been tepid at best.

People have a right to speak, to assemble, to protest, to let out a primal political scream. Our governments must protect that right, without regard to viewpoint, by preventing and policing against acts of violence. 

When violence succeeds without consequences — garnering tons of attention for its perpetrators — we are likely to see more violence.

Government is not doing job one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom individual achievement responsibility

Freedom’s Friends

Yesterday marked a solemn anniversary. Seventy-​four years ago — on Feb. 22, 1943 — three German students at the University of Munich were tried for treason by the Nazis, convicted and then executed via the guillotine, all in one day.

Days earlier, Hans Scholl and his sister Sophie had been caught distributing a leaflet at the university, which read: “In the name of German youth, we demand restitution by Adolf Hitler’s state of our personal freedom, the most precious treasure we have, out of which he has swindled us in the most miserable way.”

Hans had in his pocket a draft of another leaflet, in Christoph Probst’s handwriting. That seventh leaflet, never distributed, led to Christoph’s arrest and execution, along with Hans and Sophie.

The three were part of a small group of students who wrote and distributed leaflets under the name The White Rose — a symbol of purity standing against the monstrous evil of the Third Reich. The leaflets decried the crimes of National Socialism, including the mass murder of Jews, and urged Germans to rise up.

Three more members were later executed: Willi Graf, Alex Schmorell and Professor Kurt Huber. Another eleven were imprisoned.

Their resistance was ultimately futile, unsuccessful … but not pointless. They would not remain cogs in the killing machine that had taken the most advanced society in the world to the depths of depravity. They took a stand against what George Orwell later characterized as “a boot stamping on a human face, forever.”

Let’s remember, and say, “Never again.” And have the courage to make those words true.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. For an excellent account of The White Rose, consult the aptly titled A Noble Treason, by Richard Hanser. See also Jacob Hornberger’s The White Rose — A Lesson in Dissent. The Orwell quotation is from the dystopian novel 1984.

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