23 thoughts on ““Liberal” Talk-Show Hosts”

  1. Since John F and Robert Kennedy are two of the chief saints of the Democratic Party, of course their assassins are “right wingers.” Also, they used guns. Only right wingers carry guns.

  2. John F Keenedy was a Life NRA Member and owned an early Armalite M-16 along with a National Match M-1 Garand.

  3. The hemmoroid in the article makes Michael Savage look like a saint.

    Even a child can see the overwhelming majority of hate speech eminates from the left.

  4. Don’t worry, Rand, they’ll never figure it out.

    People who don’t want Democratic Party campaign propaganda won’t listen to the show.

    People who want Democratic Party campaign propaganda (for whatever reason) can get it from the local DNC headquarters, and not have to listen to the ads; they don’t need to listen to the show.

    So nobody has a sane reason to listen to the show, and everybody has a sane reason to avoid it. Not rocket science 🙂

    Regards,
    Ric

  5. That is sad. It’s as crazy as Jonah Goldberg concluding that Hitler and the nazis were a “left-wing” movement.

  6. Dave… Nationalsozialismus, which is often shortened to Nazi, is the ideology of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party

    Why would anyone think that a socialist worker’s party is left wing?

    The Nazis can’t be left-wing. They were imperial, aggressive, Antisemitic, killed millions, went after any competing ideology, and created a police-state

    Nope, no left-wing movements that fit those traits. Unless you count all those communist ones.

  7. Jack, I’ve studied German history. I’ve lived in Germany. I speak German. Yes, the words “socialist” and “workers’ ” appear in NSDAP. I hate to break it to you, but I and 50 years of historians — outside of revisionist lunatics like Goldberg — will tell you nazism was a product of the radical right, despite the fact that it co-opted certain elements of left-wing politics in order to appeal to the working class (long before it banned unions altogether).

    The key to understanding the difference is the word “nationalist” in the party name — nazi ideology hinged on the notion that Germany had lost the First World War only due to a lack of patriotism and a “stab-in-the-back” by socialists, communists, and jews on the home front (the infamous “Dolchstosslegende”). (Boy, where have we heard accusations of treasonous lack of patriotism in recent memory? See, two can play at the game of inappropriate historical analogies. It’s useless.)

    You might want to look up how many Weimar socialist leaders and communists were rounded up by the nazis and sent to concentration camps in the first years of the dictatorship. Look at Hitler’s foes to see where he was on the political map, not whether the word “socialist” appears in the party name.

  8. The key to understanding the difference is the word “nationalist” in the party name — nazi ideology hinged on the notion that Germany had lost the First World War only due to a lack of patriotism and a “stab-in-the-back” by socialists, communists, and jews on the home front (the infamous “Dolchstosslegende”).

    What does that have to do with being “right wing”?

    You might want to look up how many Weimar socialist leaders and communists were rounded up by the nazis and sent to concentration camps in the first years of the dictatorship.

    When it came to rounding up socialist leaders and communists and sending them to camps, Stalin made Hitler look like a piker. He even had that famous communist leader, Leon Trotsky, assassinated.

    I guess he must have been a right winger.

  9. As the Bible says:

    “15 ¶ Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

    16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

    17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

    18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

    19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Mt. 3.10 · Lk. 3.9

    20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. Mt. 12.33”

    Clearly, the Nazi’s fit with the other leftist thugocracys like Mao and Stalin.

  10. What does that have to do with being “right wing”?

    Extreme anti-communism and hatred of social engineering aren’t hallmarks of the right?

    I guess he must have been a right winger.

    See, I will affirm that communism is a product of the political left. It’s a disgusting, authoritarian perversion that I don’t admire, but I will acknowledge its intellectual roots. What cheapens the discourse is this revisionist history a la Goldberg that attempts to define “right-wing” as “everything noble” and “left-wing” as “everything despised”.

  11. Extreme anti-communism and hatred of social engineering aren’t hallmarks of the right?

    Extreme anti-communism is, but that doesn’t mean that all anti-communists are right wing. And in the history that I read, few people were more into “social engineering” than the Nazis. If extreme eugenics isn’t social engineering, what the hell is? Do you ever actually read what you write?

    The “right wingers” that I know tend to favor limited government and individual rights. To call Nazis “right wing” is ludicrous. Their party platform actually has a lot of similarities to that of the Democrats, including universal health care (at least, for those that they didn’t slaughter).

    See, I will affirm that communism is a product of the political left.

    So? That does nothing to mitigate the fact that I completely demolished your pathetic argument that Hitler must have been right wing because he sent socialists off to camps.

    What cheapens the discourse is this revisionist history a la Goldberg that attempts to define “right-wing” as “everything noble” and “left-wing” as “everything despised”.

    You obviously have either not read his book, or didn’t comprehend it.

  12. Dave: “Boy, where have we heard accusations of treasonous lack of patriotism in recent memory?”

    From democrats when talking about townhall protesters?

    And Dave by your logic Stalin is anti-communist and anti-leftwing, because of all the communists and socialists he rounded up and killed.

    As Rand mentions. Leon Trotsky anyone? Or how about the Great Terror? Or the rounding up of the old Bolshevik guard?

    “See, two can play at the game of inappropriate historical analogies. It’s useless.” Did I make one?

    Or are you denying that communism can be “imperial, aggressive, Antisemitic, killed millions, went after any competing ideology, and created a police-state”. You admit that communism is from the left.

    How about a former writer for “The Future of the Worker” a socialist newspaper, who would later on became a key figure in the founding of Fascism?

    Odd how such “right wingers’ have all their roots in socialist and communist movements.

    As for social engineering…. does Communism not do that? Didn’t they try to make the “New Soviet man”?

  13. I think most liberals prefer to read their new for whatever reason. Which might explain why they put up big numbers online.

    As a liberal, I never watch any cable news unless there is some big event. Talking heads don’t interest me in the least. I know what I think, why would I want to hear it regugitated back to me?

  14. And certainly the nazis were a right-wing movement. It’s usually listed as an end-state for extreme right wing politics, just as communism is for the left. They are not friendly ideologies.

    You know how you can tell if you are crazy? Establish a spectrum of beliefs and then put yours on the “enroute to perfection” end of the scale with no potential failure modes at all. Just pie all the way up and no reflection, just dogma.

  15. And certainly the nazis were a right-wing movement.

    Prefacing a falsehood with the word “certainly” doesn’t somehow magically render it true.

    It’s usually listed as an end-state for extreme right wing politics, just as communism is for the left.

    Yes, and it’s always mistakenly. It’s because the people making the “list” are usually academic leftists who want to disavow its leftist roots after Hitler gave fascism a bad name (leftists admired it in the twenties and thirties).

    They are not friendly ideologies.

    I don’t know what that means, but they are both leftist (i.e., collectivist) ideologies.

  16. Perhpas those who think that Nazis weren’t better dressed communists will list three important things that Nazis did that are rare in communist circles.

    “better dressed” doesn’t seem important, but if you need one, it is a difference so you can try the importance argument.

    So far, you’ve tried “rounded up communists”, but as we’ve seen, communists do that. As Monty Python pointed out, the closer two groups are politically, the more likely they are to fight when one of them gains power.

  17. Jack is correct. Those who attribute the atrocities committed by the Nazis to the “right wing” must turn a blind eye to those same acts as committed by nominal communists. They are features of totalitarianism.

  18. The brilliant historian “Dave” writes: “You might want to look up how many Weimar socialist leaders and communists were rounded up by the nazis and sent to concentration camps in the first years of the dictatorship.”

    You might also want to look up how many gangsters were taken for a ‘last ride’ by Al Capone. Obviously that guy was one champion of law and order! And look at all the Trotskyites liquidated by Stalin! That “Uncle Joe” was clearly one raid anti-communist!

  19. Part of the problem is that the words ‘right’ and ‘left’ are not very useful to describe politics. For example, monarchists in Germany were on the right. But monarchists often have a lot in common with communism and fascism. All believe in big government controlled by a small non-elected elite. The best desciption I have heard (and which avoids the left/right morass) is that communism and fascism are both heresies of socialism.

    There is no relationship between either communism or fascism and the American right wing. No one could describe communism or fascism as heresies of laissez faire capitalism or constitutional rebublicanism.

    Yours,
    Tom

  20. A large chunk of the hysteria over “were they left or right” is simply ignoring how far they managed to shift from the era of “building a party” to the era of “total war.”

    The promises during the “party building years” didn’t include conquering the world or gas chambers. It did include platitudes that led down that path – but the crucial planks of the party were promises to end the depression. It was the freaking German “New Deal”. From the several branches of my extended-by-marriage family, there are a fair number of native Germans who lived through the era and are scared by the parallels. (They’re also freaked out to have voted for their first-ever Republican.)

    The initial support wasn’t won by “the stick” so much as it was won by “the carrot.” There weren’t a lot that even recognized “the stick” until the ball was already rolling inexorably. This is actually the entire focus of Niemöller’s poem.

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