About That…

One feels for McCarthy, a true zealot who has stoically to endure his Corner colleagues’ lack of seriousness and devotion to The Cause. Only recently he had to point out to them the enormous significance of Obama’s birth details when they were inclined to dismiss the whole birther thing as inconsequential.

When the revolution comes, I fear that McCarthy will not show much mercy to his lightweight wingnut brethren. Only the truly deranged will be permitted to live.

Is anyone else vaguely nostalgic for the days when the far right could have at least been counted on to object to Communist governments abusing their own people? Or do I misremember and they never really cared?

Yes, Goldberg’s cognitive dissonance there is kinda funny, but he’s actually right about Flash Forward.

Jonah “organic honey at Dachau” Goldberg wonders, “Is ‘Nazi’ the only label our culture understands as irredeemably evil?”

As for McMegan and many others, for Pantload “our culture” means the sane, educated liberals he taunts. *

On his side of the cultural line, for his own culture, “evil” means godless socialism and satanic Islam (albeit Jews no more, for the moment anyway.)

* The basic McMegan-Pantload taunt is “I’m dumber than you, but I’m Major Media and you aren’t. Neener neener.”

Also, if soc*ialism give you an erection lasting longer than four hours, you probably need additional girlfriends.

Jonah “organic honey at Dachau” Goldberg wonders, “Is ‘Nazi’ the only label our culture understands as irredeemably evil?”

Like McMegan and many others, for Pantload “our culture” means the culture of the liberals he taunts. *

On his side of the cultural line, for his own culture, “evil” means godless soci*lism and satanic Islam (albeit Jews no more, at least for now.)

NOTE: The basic McMegan-Pantload taunt is “I’m dumber than you, but I’m Major Media and you aren’t. Neener neener.”

(Also, if soci*lism give you an erection lasting longer than four hours, you probably need additional girlfriends.)

THERE! NOW I’VE GOT IT RIGHT!

As a liberal I hesitate to call anything evil, even Hitler and the rest of the Nazi crew. What is evil without the devil? Mao and Stalin were likewise foul. Were Mao or Pol Pot less evil just because they weren’t obviously anti-Semitic? Getting our moral bearings from Nietzsche would be an advance for the human race, but shouldn’t we just skip to the end of the text and read the lesson?

I find it gratifying to learn that I belong to the “hard left”. I’m sure it will elevate my profile on all the dating sites to which I don’t belong, just as being a “new” or “extreme” atheist has heightened my hotness. Normally one’s powers wane as retirement approaches, so it’s especially delicious to find myself increasingly threatening.

“Is ‘Nazi’ the only label our culture understands as irredeemably evil?”

“Pedophile” would qualify too.

15: he means ideology, not just personal evil stuff like being a serial killer. He’s erecting a straw man whereby genocidists who exploit populist resentments that are like those of the teabaggers, but mutliplied by 100, are considered more evil than genocidists who look like the New Left multiplied by 100. It is possible that the crimes of Hitler have a special category because of all the elaborate operations analysis involved, whereas other genocides simply involved hacking people up or just letting them starve/freeze to death.

Goldberg seems to want to say that, because Hitler = Stalin, then the milder variants are also equivalent: George Wallace = Henry Wallace. But racism is evil in all its forms, but curtailment of private property is only evil, if even then, in its absolute and outright abolition (I could see where even a total abolition of property might not be evil if it were enacted democratically (though I would never vote for such a proposal)). Obviously conservatives would disagree, perhaps as much that private sector racism is evil, as that democratic soc1a!izm (hope that gets by the sentry) isn’t.

Henri, that’s why I hedged with “seems to want to say”, as making an argument along the lines I sketched is an ongoing project of conservative pundits.

(reads the effing pantload post) quite as I thought: it’s a trivial context, but Goldberg is wondering why Hitler is considered uniquely evil, that some other mass-murdering tyrant couldn’t have filled the bill. There are of course perfectly sound non-political answers to his complaint, both specific to the drama in question, and generally regarding the role Nazism plays in the public imagination vis-a-vis other regimes that were host to genocides.

But Goldberg’s is irritated that Nazism has this particular evil eminence all to itself (the rest of the following makes a lot of interpretive jumps, but surely I can’t be mistaken that he is irritated). He probably thinks this is due to the commie leanings of the media, and that correctly, racial ideologies in all their manifestations should be considered no more evil than redistibutionist ideologies in all their manifestations. If so, he’s wrong on two counts: (1) the unique status of Nazism has nothing to do with the liberal leanings of journalists and dramatists, but with the particular dramatic arc of the rise and fall of the Third Reich, and the compressed nature of its war with the Allies, and (2) racism is bad in any form, proportional to its virulence, but redistibutionism isn’t intrinsically evil in an analogous way at all.

I’m not sure the Khmer Rouge (mentioned in his post) falls in the category of “redistibutionism” any more than Nazism. But I also don’t perceive “our culture” labeling Khmer Rouge less “evil” than Nazism.

The moral quandary of “Do we cut a deal with a Nazi?” is so ancient and tired.

I really think that this is the heart of Goldberg’s random musing — or rant, if you will — concerning the current crisis at the U.N. a frickin’ TV show. It is a cliche, by now. Why go there? Isn’t that his point?

Or are we to believe that what he “really means” is that he’s sad that the television audience hasn’t “woken up” to where sci-fi shows can portray liberal college professors as the ultimate evil?

This is what happens when you take every opportunity to mock, and turn every mocking into your own little rhapsody.

“Evil” is a meaningless term without religion behind it. In this case, Judeo-Christianity.
It has a kind of naive moral content and function, but nothing about the term carries all the way.
Destroying the world, or the human race, or all mammalian life on earth etc., and doing it on purpose, is a horribly “evil” thing.
Doing it accidentally is just horribly sad.
The end result seems more powerfully substantive than the motive and intent of the causative agencies. So that “evil” doesn’t mean much in that context. Unless we have souls and eternity and final judgment and all that to look forward to. Because otherwise there’s nobody there to accuse the perps of having committed an “evil” more disgustingly horrid than any other in our long sordid history.
But maybe that’s just my own little parochial view of things.

“Because otherwise there’s nobody there to accuse the perps of having committed an “evil” more disgustingly horrid than any other in our long sordid history.”

Apart from everyone in the world, sure.

Evil Bender:

Is anyone else vaguely nostalgic for the days when the far right could have at least been counted on to object to Communist governments abusing their own people? Or do I misremember and they never really cared?

They never really cared about the people, just the fact that the dirty commies were preventing good, wholesome capitalists from being able to make a quick buck selling them shit they don’t want (but will gladly manufacture for us at slave wages).

The conclusion was great, but “Jonah “organic honey at Dachau” Goldberg wonders” made me laugh. Sometimes I think these folks just consult the revised Daily Hate List before frothing, since many of their attacks are wildly inconsistent and incoherent. Oh well, McCarthy will always have Chicago and Bill Ayers.