Such thinking was once dominant in Anglo-Saxon philosophy schools but the great expansion of tertiary education in recent decades has meant that many less rigorous thinkers have been employed as philosophers, some even being third-rate enough to find enlightenment in the words of an obsolete economist called Karl Marx. So philosophy schools are now replete with people who seem to think they are being profound when they say: “There is no such thing as right and wrong” or “There are many realities”. To an Anglo-Saxon empiricist, such statements are simply confused.

Such confused thinking is usually described (rather fancifully) these days as “postmodernism” but for historical purposes it is probably best subsumed under the broad category of “existentialism” — and there were many prominent existentialist thinkers in the first half of the 20th century, particularly in Germany. And many existentialist thinkers at that time were sympathetic to National Socialism (Nazism), just as their counterparts today are solidly in favour of all sorts of Leftist thinking. So existentialist thinking and Leftism have always been intimately associated among many who call themselves philosophers. And it should therefore be no surprise that prewar existentialists sound very profound to existentialists today.

The Nazi connection is however embarrassing. Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, DeMan and others sound very good and wise and profound to Leftist philosophers today so how do you cope with the Nazi connection? Easy: In the traditional Leftist way of dealing with all inconvenient facts — by ignoring it.

One of the holier of today’s existentialists has however recently upset the applecart by pointing out that the great god Heidegger was a Nazi and calling for all Heidegger’s thinking to be denounced and renounced. Leftists are not letting go of such an inspiring (to them) figure as Heidegger, however. What Heidegger says is central to what they say, so to denounce Heidegger would be to denounce most of their own thinking. And there the matter rests at the moment. A small excerpt from a NYT story about the matter below. That Nazi thinking is one subset of socialist thinking is, of course, never acknowledged:

For decades the German philosopher Martin Heidegger has been the subject of passionate debate. His critique of Western thought and technology has penetrated deeply into architecture, psychology and literary theory and inspired some of the most influential intellectual movements of the 20th century. Yet he was also a fervent Nazi.

Now a soon-to-be published book in English has revived the long-running debate about whether the man can be separated from his philosophy. Drawing on new evidence, the author, Emmanuel Faye, argues fascist and racist ideas are so woven into the fabric of Heidegger’s theories that they no longer deserve to be called philosophy. As a result Mr. Faye declares, Heidegger’s works and the many fields built on them need to be re-examined lest they spread sinister ideas as dangerous to modern thought as “the Nazi movement was to the physical existence of the exterminated peoples.”

First published in France in 2005, the book, “Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism Into Philosophy,” calls on philosophy professors to treat Heidegger’s writings like hate speech. Libraries, too, should stop classifying Heidegger’s collected works (which have been sanitized and abridged by his family) as philosophy and instead include them under the history of Nazism. These measures would function as a warning label, like a skull-and-crossbones on a bottle of poison, to prevent the careless spread of his most odious ideas, which Mr. Faye lists as the exaltation of the state over the individual, the impossibility of morality, anti-humanism and racial purity.

The book is the most radical attack yet on Heidegger (1889-1976) and would upend the philosophical field’s treatment of his work in the United States, and even more so in France, where Heidegger has frequently been required reading for an advanced degree. Mr. Faye, an associate professor at the University of Paris, Nanterre, not only wants to drum Heidegger from the ranks of philosophers, he wants to challenge his colleagues to rethink the very purpose of philosophy and its relationship to ethics.

At the same time scholars in disciplines as far flung as poetry and psychoanalysis would be obliged to reconsider their use of Heidegger’s ideas. Although Mr. Faye talks about the close connection between Heidegger and current right-wing extremist politics, left-wing intellectuals have more frequently been inspired by his ideas. Existentialism and postmodernism as well as attendant attacks on colonialism, atomic weapons, ecological ruin and universal notions of morality are all based on his critique of the Western cultural tradition and reason.

I go into some detail about the confusions of “postmodernist” thinking here

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, DISSECTING LEFTISM, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena . List of backup or “mirror” sites here or here — for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is “down” or failing to update. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

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In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.

The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site “not to disclose the existence of this request” unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.

Kristina Clair, a 34-year old Linux administrator living in Philadelphia who provides free server space for Indymedia.us, said she was shocked to receive the Justice Department’s subpoena. (The Independent Media Center is a left-of-center amalgamation of journalists and advocates that — according to their principles of unity and mission statement — work toward “promoting social and economic justice” and “social change.”)

The subpoena (PDF) from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded “all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us” on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to “include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information,” including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers’ Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.

Clair turned to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which dug into whether Big Government is supposed to be able to behave like this.

Under long-standing Justice Department guidelines, subpoenas to members of the news media are supposed to receive special treatment. One portion of the guidelines, for instance, says that “no subpoena may be issued to any member of the news media” without “the express authorization of the attorney general” — that would be current attorney general Eric Holder — and subpoenas should be “directed at material information regarding a limited subject matter.”

Still unclear is what criminal investigation U.S. Attorney Morrison was pursuing. Last Friday, a spokeswoman initially promised a response, but Morrison sent e-mail on Monday evening saying: “We have no comment.” The Justice Department in Washington, D.C. also declined to respond.

Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney at the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, replied to the Justice Department on behalf of his client in a February 2009 letter (PDF) outlining what he described as a series of problems with the subpoena, including that it was not personally served, that a judge-issued court order would be required for the full logs, and that Indymedia did not store logs in the first place.

Morrison replied in a one-sentence letter saying the subpoena had been withdrawn. Around the same time, according to the EFF, the group had a series of discussions with assistant U.S. attorneys in Morrison’s office who threatened Clair with possible prosecution for obstruction of justice if she disclosed the existence of the already-withdrawn subpoena…

For more info on this alarming example of applied Obamunist Transparency:

Bankston has written a longer description of the exchange of letters with the Justice Department, which he hopes will raise awareness of how others should respond to similar legal demands for Web logs, customer records, and compulsory silence. “Our fear is that this kind of bogus gag order is much more common than one would hope, considering they’re legally baseless,” Bankston says. “We’re telling this story in hopes that more providers will press back and go public when the government demands their silence.”

Hopefully liberals who believe in at least some of the fundamental principles of liberty that make America America, will awaken soon to the nature of what they have wrought by allowing the Moonbat Messiah and his gang of sleazy neo-Marxists into the White House.

On a tip from nancz. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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This is a priceless 50 year-old cartoon, demonstrating how big and small business thrives alongside labor. Then, as today, one cannot survive without the other – capital and labor working together.

Liberals contend that America is different today, our needs are different, the U.S. Constitution is no longer relevant, but this humorous and desperately serious cartoon shows how the struggle for liberty never ends…until we let “them” end it.

Fifty year old political cartoon predicts future (video)

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The free market is nonsense? How many communist leaning associates have to be exposed before America wakes up to realize we put a radical in power of our country?

Naked Emperor News:

Ron Bloom is the Manufacturing Czar. In the video he admits, “We kind of agree with Mao that power comes largely from the barrel of a gun.”
Doesn’t that make you feel secure?

JMF tells us more about Ron Bloom:

The name Ron Bloom is one that we need to start paying attention to. He has a long history of being the negotiating face of unions in a suit. He is a Harvard Business School graduate who has worked for the unions beginning with SEIU for decades. The most recent union he represented was the United Steel Workers (USW) before becoming a part of the automotive team that Obama put together. You know the one that had the head Steven Rattner having to resign over some questions about his personal finances mixed in with a little fraudulent money gifts. Rattner was replaced by Ron Bloom, and voila the United Auto Workers (UAW), got a sweetheart deal backed up by the power of the federal government to try and stave off bankruptcy.

Hat tip: Jim Hoft

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In another Obama loving column, Chicago Tribune writer Steve Chapman took pains to assure readers that Barack Obama is no socialist, calling the charge a “fabrication.” To prove that Obama’s attempted take over of the nation’s healthcare and his actual take over of the financial and auto sectors isn’t a step toward socialism, Chapman countered that President Bush, “a conservative hero,” did it too.

Obama, it’s true, has done things that involve enlarging government — bailing out banks, taking over General Motors, proposing a “public option” for health insurance and spending $787 billion to stimulate the economy.

But it was George W. Bush, a conservative hero, who tossed a federal lifeline to financial institutions and automakers, as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He also signed the 2008 stimulus package, which was billed as a tax cut but was nothing more than a handout of $168 billion the government didn’t have.

It is amazing to compare the Bush bailout package to Obama’s policy of actually taking possession of business by government as if they were one and the same. But even more ridiculous is to claim that Bush is a “conservative hero” in the context of bail-outs and finances as if it were a true statement.

George W. Bush was never a “conservative hero.” It is certainly true that his faith based polices were a favorite aspect of his presidency among conservatives and it cannot be denied that Bush was a hero for his prosecution of the war. But Chapman seems to have ignored that conservatives lambasted Bush at the tail of his term for the very bailouts that Chapman claims made him a conservative hero. In the end few conservatives claimed George W. Bush as one of their own. Bush was not a conservative hero. He was, in some ways, a hero of conservatives, but he was not a “conservative hero.”

It is illegitimate to compare the level of Obama’s socialist-like policies to Bush as if they are in any way comparable.

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The International Monetary Fund, acting at the behest of leaders of the Group of 20 nations, is examining how a tax on financial institutions could be applied globally. …

Neither the size nor use of revenue from such a tax has been decided. Brazil’s finance minister, Guido Mantega, said when ministers met in Pittsburgh recently they discussed using proceeds to help finance developing countries during crises. Another possibility, discussed in a recent IMF report, would be to “pre-finance a bailout fund” to handle financial institutions deemed “too big to fail.” …

That is, when foreign governments inflict socialist power grabs like Chairman Zero’s seizure of GM and Chrysler, Americans will be sent the bill. Looting the “financial sector” means looting you, since any shortfalls suffered by Goldman Sucks and friends will be made up with free money from their Big Government cronies. After all, the financial sector is too big to fail — and too well connected.

In case anyone imagines that money handed over to the IMF will go anywhere but straight down the toilet:

Last year, World Bank President Robert Zoellick urged sovereign-wealth funds and state-owned pension plans to invest 1% of their holdings in equity in sub-Saharan Africa, a proposal he called a “1% solution.”

This is great news for Robert Mugabe, who could always use a new palace or two.

As Cliff Kinkaid notes, global taxes may hit us before we see them coming:

One can’t exclude the possibility of such a tax being slipped into a health care or cap-and-trade bill that the Congress or the public could not have time to read before passage.

After all, Demonrat Congresscritters can’t be expected to read the laws they rubber-stamp on behalf of Chairman Zero, who unsurprisingly is completely on board with plans to enslave American taxpayers on behalf of the world community.

The “Leader’s Statement” endorsed by President Obama and released at the [Pittsburgh G-20] declares on page 10 that “We task the IMF to prepare a report for our next meeting with regard to the range of options countries have adopted or are considering as to how the financial sector could make a fair and substantial contribution toward paying for any burdens associated with government interventions to repair the banking system.”

The term “fair and substantial contribution” is code for a global tax.

Naturally our moonbat rulers will spin the tax as an attack on the capitalist fat cats their media enablers relentlessly demonize. But the bill will be passed along to normal Americans.

One proposal, popular at the United Nations for decades and long-advocated by Fidel Castro, is the Tobin Tax, named after Yale University economist James Tobin. Such a tax, which could affect stocks, mutual funds, and pensions, could generate hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Indeed, Steven Solomon, a former staff reporter at Forbes, says in his book, The Confidence Game, that such a proposal “might net some $13 trillion a year…” because it is based on taking a percentage of money from the trillions of dollars exchanged daily in global financial markets.

The percentage looted will inevitably creep upward, as with all taxes.

Meanwhile, President Obama used his recent speech to the United Nations to declare, “We have fully embraced the Millennium Development Goals.” He left unsaid what this means. It has been calculated that this will cost the U.S. $845 billion to meet U.N. demands for a certain percentage of Gross National Product to go for official foreign aid to the rest of the world. Compliance with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was incorporated into the Global Poverty Act that Obama had introduced as a U.S. senator but which never passed.

A global tax of the kind envisioned in the G-20 document could help provide the revenue to fulfill Obama’s promise to comply with the MDGs.

If you think our economy is staggering now, wait until the Community Activist in Chief loads the entire world onto its back.

On a tip from Sal. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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Eric Boehlert of Media Matters is the worst kind of American. In fact, it’s hard to count him as an American at all except by accident of birth. It is plain that this Boehlert fellow is against many aspects of the American tradition, chief of which is freedom of political speech. Well, perhaps, he’s not entirely against that freedom. Instead he’s against that freedom for anyone that isn’t in wholesale agreement with him and his left-wing cronies.

One of his September postings on the extremist, anti-American website AlterNet.org stands as exhibit “A” in the proof of his anti-Americanism, his utter lack of historical knowledge, his uncivil attitude, and his desire to shut down those that disagree with him. It all goes to prove that Eric Boehlert seems to be little else than a fascist.

The left’s newest meme against anyone that disagrees with it is to say that all conservatives are “dangerous” to the country. It is said in leftist circles that anyone with a conservative viewpoint is only a hairsbreadth away from committing violence against the U.S.A., its government, and citizens. Because of this, the left claims, conservatives have somehow become dangerous.

Sadly, these assumptions are exactly the sort of charge that they used to rail against conservative minded Americans for thinking of them. But introspection is not the sort of mood the extreme left is in today. Today they are in a fearmongering, hate-filled mode because for the first time in a generation they have the taste of power in their mouths. They are the ones in a position to say what should or should not be done as a matter of policy. They’ve become “the man.”

Let us savor the irony of all this, shall we? The left used to bemoan that they were “victims” of conservative oppression. They used to agitate that “the man” was ready to put them in re-education camps, that “the suits” were forcing them to conform to the system, and that their freedom of speech was always on the verge of being eliminated by “the establishment.”

Yet, now they are the establishment. And what are they doing? They are attempting to shut down conservative talk radio, they want tea party goers to be kept from the streets, and, tellingly, they insist that any talk against the administration is “dangerous” talk. In short, the left is now guilty of precisely the sort of oppressive attitudes against conservatives that they claimed was so wrong for conservatives of the past to use to keep them down.

In real life we call this hypocrisy. As I said, though, philosophical introspection is not the left’s current mood. Neither is sanity, logic, or justice. Power is all that is on their minds and they will do anything to maintain it.

Boehlert’s AlterNet post makes the irresponsible and anti-American charge that conservatives are engaged in a “demented national jihad” of hatred, one of which “this country has not seen in modern times.” Absurdly, in allusion to the assassination of Kennedy, Boehlert goes on to claim that the “last time right-wing hatred ran wild like this a president was killed.”

Let’s deal with the absurd J.F.K. allusion first. If this situation hasn’t been seen “in modern times” how, then, can Boehlert begin the discussion with J.F.Kennedy’s assassination? Is Boehlert making the claim that J.F.K.’s death didn’t happen in “modern times”? Clearly this Boehlert fellow is not a history buff… nor a maven of the practice of logic.

That uninformed childishness aside, we get to the meat of his charge: that right-wing hatred was responsible for J.F.K.’s death. Of course, once again we run smack dab into that whole truth in history thing to devastate his outlandish point. You see no “right-wing hatred” was involved in the assassination of Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald was a Marxist, a man of the left. And even if you don’t believe in the lone gunman theory, other suspected perpetrators happen to be shadowy government agencies or Organized Crime Syndicates. None of these had anything to do with right-wing anything.

So, as this hyperbolic Boehlert does his best to cast the right as suspects of a national jihad of some sort, his main historical point is divorced from the very right he castigates.

Boehlert goes on to say that we are in an age of “increasingly violent rhetorical attacks on Obama.” To be sure, violence can’t be violence unless some violence has been committed. So, as a simple matter of fact, rhetoric cannot be violence. Only violence is violence. Rhetoric may advocate violence, but it is not, in and of itself, actual violence. Boehlert is plainly not smart enough to understand this truth. But even if we ignore his inability to understand the English language, his point is still off base because no one in the conservative movement has been advocating any violence against Obama, the left, or anything else for that matter.

As Eric Odom of the American Liberty Alliance reported, he’s been at Tea Party meetings throughout the country these last few months and has heard not one call for violence. In fact, he says that President Obama’s name has hardly even come up at these meetings.

But, let’s not have truth go getting in the way of Eric Boehlert’s hate.

Lastly, it must be pointed out that Boehlert’s obvious fear is over the Summer’s townhall meetings — and fear is mostly what he is selling to his left-wing audience. Boehlert worries about “violence” and overheated rhetoric coming from the right in this age of Obama. Naturally he focuses on showman Glenn Beck (and correspondingly ignores the foul Keith Olbermann and the half-witted Ed Schultz, both coming from the far right and filled with ignorant hatemongering of their own). But if violence is what makes Boehlert fear for his country, it is amazing that he seemed to have completely missed the singular fact that all the violence that came out of this Townhall Summer was perpetrated by the left. Union thugs and left-wing lunatics, the sort that frequent Boehlert ’s website, are the only ones that caused any violence this summer.

Further, we can point to another fact that gives the lie to Boehlert’s hatemongering: no one was arrested at any of the many tea party protests this year. In fact, the only arrests made at any protest this Summer was when anarchists, and violence prone leftists protested at the G20 meeting in Pennsylvania. There weren’t even any Tea Party goers arrested at the gigantic protest in Washington D.C. on September 12th. Not only that, but the conservatives at that protest even left the National Mall cleaner than it was when they got there!

In the end, this clownish Boehlert is really either mentally disabled, or a liar. And, since he spelled everything right in his AlterNet post, I am forced to conclude that he is the later.

Unfortunately, Eric Boehlert is part and parcel to the hyperbolic, fearmongering and hatred coming from the far left in America today. But, it isn’t just partisan blindness that leads people like Boehlert down this rocky road to self-loathing and fascist sentiment. They know what they are doing. No, the truth is, people like Boehlert hope to whip up their mindnumbed followers into a level of hatred that will overcome any sense of logic or goodwill they might have left for their fellow Americans.

It’s a tried and true application of the sort of fascist control mechanisms that have been seen is movements like Boehlert’s throughout history. In the end, we should all recognize Boehlert and his ilk for what they are and assess his words accordingly.

And now, to show that it is Boehlert’s side that is all caught up in so much hatemongering, here is a little video to show you what I mean…

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A climate change bill circulating in the Senate on Tuesday is slightly more ambitious than one passed in the House of Representatives, but still has many details to be worked out on how to encourage companies to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases.

The legislation by Senators Barbara Boxer and John Kerry to be formally unveiled on Wednesday aims to reduce smokestack emissions of carbon dioxide by 20 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050 — from 2005 levels.

Sweet! And, such transparency! Halp us Jon Carry, halp us!

Boxer’s Environment and Public Works Committee is expected to continue working behind closed doors to fill in other details before trying to sign off on the bill by the end of October.

John McCain has already stated he could never support this legislation, and James Inhofe said that he cannot imagine it being debated and passed this year.

The Senate Democrats’ bill also aims to encourage more “clean vehicles” and to improve airliners’ fuel efficiency. It also would help those who suffer job losses from climate control efforts with a “worker adjustment assistance” program.

With a wave of the mighty fairy wand and some unicorn poots, all will be well. As Bob Ellis at The Dakota Voice writes

This bill would cost millions of American jobs, raise our electric bills by 40% or more, hinder much-needed refining capacity, hurt foreign trade, block much-needed power plant development, require home inspections and environmental retrofitting before we can sell our homes, regulate how much water we can use in our own homes,

Courtesy of the Green Hell Blog, we have a look at the draft of the Senate version of the cap and trade global warming tax bill.

Apparently, not to be outdone by the asininity and hostility toward the American people of the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate has upped the ante and called for a 20% reduction in greenhouse gases, even more egregious than the House bill.

All this to “fix” a problem that doesn’t even exist!

Whether it exists or not, bottom line, Democrats see this issue as a way of controlling more of America’s economy, its businesses, and its People.

BTW, just be thankful I didn’t add one of my special Barbara Boxer photoshops!

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