Its Ideal Time, however, was hammered home by the propagandists as just around the corner. Soviet communism became a shell game in which commissars and higher ranks lived large and the masses merely lived. This appealing but basically foolish ideology held power in the USSR for 70 years, abandoned long before its end by almost all the working classes themselves and most of the ruling class. This was a political version of Judgment Day, when the wicked capitalists would be judged and destroyed so that the pure in heart (the heavily romanticized working classes) could attain the Ideal Time. Lee Harris explained the basic tenets of Marxism, and its fundamental flaws, in his excellent essay, "The Intellectual Origins of America-Bashing." Suffice it to say here that Marx considered revolution by the oppressed both essential and inevitable for true socialism to be established. The ideal time is when "the workers control the means of production" after the capitalists have been violently overthrown.
Marxism is an eschatological ideology (a godless religion in its own right, really). Non-religious westerners are just as liable to eschatological fervor as religious people anywhere. The Reverend Donald Sensing, who blogs as One Hand Clapping, has a marvellous distillation of some thinking about the way the anti-war Left is happily associating with Stalinist types and what it indicates. It's not that he'll steal Kerry's spotlight as that he'll give the underwhelming Kerry some much needed shine. Having Clinton around promises to up the news-story quotient and starpower. I think there's a measure of truth in that, but I also think the Dems understand that their convention is liable to be a dullfest with only minimal coverage by the networks. But it's a pretty good story."Ĭlinton's speech, covering everything from 18th century politics to 21st century genetics, mirrored what he said the memoir itself would comprise: personal memories, general history, political analysis.Some people think Clinton's just spotlight grabbing from Kerry and the Democratic convention. "I have no earthly idea if it's a great book.
"When I was a young man, getting out of law school, I said one of the goals I had in life was to write a great book," he explained. And he showed the knack for summing up a 950-page book in a couple of sentences. But he left to the same noisy approval as when he arrived ? a standing ovation. Clinton began 30 minutes behind schedule and spoke for 45 minutes, 25 minutes longer than expected. It was not the most efficient of promotional events. The keynote speaker at BookExpo America, publishing's annual national convention, Clinton was here to promote his memoir, "My Life," which comes out June 22 with a first printing of 1.5 million. Our editors won't let us.Nope, no bias here.įrom Blogcritics, where I am a contributor, comes a pointed look at the upcoming Bill Clinton ass-covering, self-blow-job, historical rewrite, via Yahoo News.īill Clinton, once a president and now an author, offered a characteristic performance Thursday night for the country's publishing community: late, long, but ultimately satisfying to the crowd. In a few weeks hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, would allow themselves to be organised by the opponents of democracy and modernity and would march through the streets of London without a flicker of self-doubt.
#Wreg newsfire in eudora free
It had gone as close to supporting Ba'athist fascism as it dared and had formed a working alliance with the Muslim Association of Britain, which, along with the usual misogyny and homophobia of such organisations, also believed that Muslims who decided that there was no God deserved to die for the crime of free thought. The anti-war movement wasn't a simple repetition of the old story of the politically naive being led by the nose by sly operators. Oh there are lots of reasons, said the BBC hacks. It was depressing that a totalitarian party was in the saddle, but that's where the SWP always tries to get. Would I like information on how the leadership of the anti-war movement had been taken over by the Socialist Workers Party? Maybe, I replied. Just before the war against Iraq I began to receive strange calls from BBC journalists. But that news, spilled all across the Internet by bloggers, was never presented to the viewing public. It's an admission by a reporter about his fellow reporters and their editors.Ĭohen writes about how the British media, specifically the BBC, knew that the group organising the large anti-war marches of 2003 was a Marxist front. This New Statesman column by Brit Nick Cohen is remarkable in one very important regard.
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