In case you missed it

There’s a discussion over at Wonkette.

Now, let’s brace ourselves for a “Clinton did this too!” crapstorm.

It would almost be worth it to see Ted Olson go back before the USSC to argue that Bush v. Palm Beach and Bush v. Gore were wrongly decided, and that therefore the 22nd Amendment leaves GWB eligible for another run in November 2008.

Almost.

Or this …

http://ourcivilisation.com/theend.htm

“Mexico is now (circa 2000) colonising America and imposing its language and culture. Though the Americans still have the strength of understanding to recognise that the Hispanic invasion should be stopped, they are unable to take the measures required to achieve this end. The very least that must be done to halt the Hispanic invasion is the mass enslavement, or execution, of the invaders, which must be followed by an American invasion of Mexico to enforce American language and values upon the Mexicans. But the citizens of the USA recoil from such ruthless violence (see ‘the communal attitude to violence’) and instead embrace delusion.”

Update:

Jesus, it turns out that the above words about enslaving and killing Mexicans also appeared on the FSM website. See

http://stewart-rhodes.blogspot.com/2007/08/neocon-think-tank-calls-for-enslaving.html

So they let him continue to write and post (until this latest thing) even after advocating mass murder.

abb1: What’s so hoaxy about that? I thought it’s already quite well-known that wingnuts live in Bizarro World. I won’t put it beyond him to write such things in earnest.

Bi, it’s just seems odd that the guy named Atkinson would have this caricature of a diet invented and hyped by another Atkinson. On the other hand, ‘Atkinson’ sure is a common enough name.

Cian, seems to me the current page http://www.ourcivilisation.com/author.htm is the same as the google cache image.

Ah, dammit. You’re right, Dr. Atkins, of course. Sorry.

He’s actually framing a very common-sense principal

Principle.

Well, if he is not a hoax, then he’s definitely a paranoid, sick guy.

This CSP/FSM group is a different matter.

And you obviously ignored the fact that Aktinson is obviously a demented fruitcake whose effect on US policy under any administration would be as close to negligible to be zero.

One of my friends was convinced Blair would crown himself dictator for life in the increasingly totalitarian (as he saw it) UK.

I personally find it hard to fit a strip of greaseproof people between fruitcakes of either variety.

Anthony – Ummm, what? The fact that a prominent rightwing think tank published a piece calling for Bush to declare himself dictator proves that liberals who think that totalitarianism is a real danger in the US/UK are nuts?

I wish I could find this sort of thing funny.

It’s funny because it is of zero importance Engels.

Do you think Bush or ANY of his advisors would even vaguely consider Aktinson’s course of action tenable? If they were that unhinged they would have already buked Tehran.

It’s a like a 24 plot, which is about as seriously ass you should take it.

Anthony: The Huffington Post *is* demented in the very strict sense that many of its authors, like Martin Lewis, cannot think systematically and have a shaky grip on reality.

Atkinson is not demented. He’s thinking coherently from a set of underlying racist/culturalist principles.

Check out the Family Security Matters website (their banner featuring a very white woman and her very white boychild) with its rants about immigrants, terrorists, and Western Civilization. Atkinson is more open about his contempt for democracy and advocacy of violence, but the basic worldview is the same, which is presumably why he fit in so well there. Then go to the CSP site. The rhetoric is not much different.

Atkinson articulates the widely held view that the Constitution and rule of law are only incidental to something called “America” defined as a culture/civilization facing inimical cultures/civilizations. And Atkinson faces squarely the fact that current U.S. policy entails disregard for the lives of Iraqis.

So I’m happy to join you in repudiating these views, but we can’t dismiss them as dementia.

Anthony does not live in the real world. If he did, he would realize that our President thinks that there’s a lot of wisdom in end-times Armageddon Christianity. Atkinson is a smidgen nuttier than Bush, and Bush disagrees with him on immigration, but Atkinson-like loons are a key component of the Republican core constituency.

Anthony should be locked up until he returns to his senses. I’ve heard that if you hose the demented down with cold water for half an hour, they regain contact with reality.

I think that’s a fair point Colin, but neither should we worry that they are representative of even the more hawkish mainstream republican thought. It’s like discovering some mad old conservatives have BNP sympathies and then worrying that a David Cameron government will bring in apartheid in when elected.

Prediction: the next five US Presidents will be Republican or Democrat and unlikely to susceptable to Atkinson’s argument.

“And you obviously ignored the fact that [Ledeen] is obviously a demented fruitcake whose effect on US policy under any administration would be as close to negligible to be zero.”

Anthony, Ledeen has edged right up to the edge of Atkinson-like thinking, is clearly a demented fruitcake, but one whose effect on US policy under this administration is far from zero.

Maybe Atkinson is an outlier, but views close enough to his as to be nearly indistinguishable are coming out of the VPs office. At this point conventional war on Iran is as a practical matter impossible, the cost in planes and aircrew using conventional weaponry would be astronomical (Iran’s planes may be largely obsolete by US standards but their air-defense generally probably is not) yet Cheney is openly calling for war anyway. You don’t have to go far from A to Z to figure out what that means, in fact you can stop with A.

Anthony:

“And you obviously ignored the fact that Aktinson is obviously a demented fruitcake whose effect on US policy under any administration would be as close to negligible to be zero.”

Which has _what_ to do with your earlier claim that Atkinson “isn’t the only one advocating non-democratic military action in the US to suit his politics”, because Lewis did the same… except he didn’t. Quick, shift the goalposts before anyone notices!

= = =

Didn’t I say that there’ll be a “Clinton did it too!” crapstorm coming. And sure enough it did.

(Though I didn’t see the “I’m wrong, but I’m still right!” one coming, but maybe I should have.)

even as polls show that America is becoming more secular than it was

Which signifies what exactly? In 1932 37% of Germans voted for either the SPD or the KPD, both a lot more secular than any mainstream political party in the USA in the last 100 years. Much good it did.

Clinton did it too, I’m wrong but I’m still right, and Michael Moore is fat.

re: 28

What do you _seriously_ think is going to happen at the end of the Bush Presidency?

42: Nobody knows. I expect Bush and his crew to stir things up as much as possible during the next 16 months, and I fear that the Democrats won’t respond effectively. He still has his Commander in Chief powers.

28: Atkinson is not demented. He’s thinking coherently from a set of underlying racist/culturalist principles.

I don’t think in this day and age this kind of racist/culturalist ideas can be considered rational.

I suppose one can build a whole perfectly logical theory of the universe based on the assumption that the earth is flat, but he’ll still be crazy.

“Atkinson articulates the widely held view that the Constitution and rule of law are only incidental to something called “America” defined as a culture/civilization facing inimical cultures/civilizations. ”

Widely held? Name say ten people I’d recognize please.

According to David Corn:
“Jonathan Alter attributed the expression to “Chief Justice” Robert Jackson in a Newsweek piece that advocated the use of torture—”psychological torture” to “jump-start” the 9/11 investigation. At a Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., tagged Justice Arthur Goldberg as the author when he used the formulation to support Attorney General John Ashcroft.

In an op-ed article, Rep. Jim Talent, R-Mo., used the suicide-pact rejoinder to defend President Bush’s proposed use of military tribunals, . . .”

He mentions some others but does not make clear what they advocated based on the old saw.

Richard Posner on the limitations of the rule of law
“the currently most controversial antiterrorist measure operative in the United States—the National Security Agency’s program of electronic surveillance outside the scope of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—seems to me, as to a majority of Americans, to be a reasonable measure, whether or not it violates FISA.”

Tim Worstall:

Yeah, the Caesar comparison is one of my favorite parts. I particularly like the implication (if I read it right) that Caesar’s main reason for taking over Roman government was to stabilize Gaul.

The group rather obviously endorsed this. It was posted front and center on their website, not buried as the un-solicited ravings of a madman in the comments section.

Thanks, JPS (#48) for that link (to the exchange with Atkinson). Here’s another one he had with my friend Justin (a philosopher), which is even more entertaining.

55: I particularly like the implication (if I read it right) that Caesar’s main reason for taking over Roman government was to stabilize Gaul.

Wait, isn’t Iraq divided in three parts? Uncanny.

55: I particularly like the implication (if I read it right) that Caesar’s main reason for taking over Roman government was to stabilize Gaul.

Wait, isn’t Iraq divided in three parts? Uncanny.

1. Does anybody else find that whenever anybody mentions Gaul, they immediately think of Asterix?

2. Does anybody else find that whenever anybody mentions Asterix, they immediately think of Oliver Kamm?

Yes rea. Somehow this guy has collapsed the whole complicated historical series from the Gracchi in 133BC to the accession of Vespasian in 71AD into a single event by by a single man in a single year (49 BC) and then managed to mangle each and every fact. That is not a fair description of either Caesar’s tactics in Gaul or after he crossed the Rubicon, not to mention the fact that he was assassinated by those crushed political opponents. Kind of an odd result of ‘ended the personal threat’.

This bears about as much resemblence to real Roman history as ‘300’ does to the Battle of Thermopylae. And for some of the same reasons.

“Timmy do you like gladiator movies?”

A conservative Sokal?

“whenever anybody mentions Asterix, they immediately think of Oliver Kamm?”

Noooo…Obelix maybe?

…co-opting of the Gaulish aristocracy, to control Gaul. This included, according to Suetonius, having an affair with the Prince of Bithynia.

Bythinia? in Anatolia? This would suggest that what Bush needs to do at this stage is to screw the King of Nepal. That’d pacify Iraq all right – everyone would be too gobsmacked to carry on fighting.

“Bythinia? in Anatolia? ”

Ah. My Bad.

Bythinia? in Anatolia? This would suggest that what Bush needs to do at this stage is to screw the King of Nepal. That’d pacify Iraq all right – everyone would be too gobsmacked to carry on fighting.

Awesome; I daren’t shut my eyes now.

“to enforce American language ”

As someone who is actually English, I always roll around laughing when I see this.

Yet more dragging of the goalposts rightward. Ten years ago, if anybody had said that America would torture people, everybody would have looked at you as if you were a bugeyed Martian gibbering nonsense. Everybody knew that Americans don’t torture. That’s those icky third world dictators and such. They’re’ the ones who torture.

Now folks who advocate torture are in positions of power in our government, and nobody ever seems to notice that the goalposts have moved — that what was unacceptable ten years ago now is not only horribly acceptable, but almost unremarked-upon.

If the tighty righties can do for dictatorship what they did for torture, i.e., make it socially acceptable to talk about it (albeit a bit icky but, y’know, the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact blah blah), then we’re Germany 1934. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.

– Badtux the Goalposts Penguin

Mrs Tilton – gibber. My brain literally cannot process that level of idiocy. If there are more than 5 other idiots listening to him then I’m worried. But I guess I shall just have to cing on to the naive hope that he is so wingnut he can’t possibly become mainstream. Fingers crossed, la la la I can’t hear you.

So why did you invoke 1934?

Martin Bento:

Weren’t the original Nazi comparisons part of why the American public is so far to the right in the first place?

The comparisons of everything non-libertarian and non-conservative to Nazism.