….but even if he didn’t write them himself, he published them under his own byline, and made a profit on them. As for them being 20 years old, well, you judge whether people will dismiss them as old news when Team Obama starts rolling out a Ron Paul Quote of the Day from the convention to the election.

When primary time comes along, it becomes 30 second sound bite time even more than normal. Just try to explain to the average voter, who doesn’t pay that much attention to politics, the nuances of those statements in a short time. They won’t believe the spin. They won’t buy it. They also won’t buy comments like this, which Ron Paul made on the 14th of December at a town hall, via The Right Scoop (which has the video)

How would I deal with the threat or the so-called threat of the Iranians, that they are going to disrupt the oil supply?

Well I’d be provoking them a lot less because they’re reacting to the provoking of the West saying “we’re gonna put on sanctions”. We have them surrounded with nuclear weapons and we’re claiming that they’re gonna build a nuclear weapon and there’s no evidence for this.

So we’re just looking for trouble. We’re building the war propaganda against Iran just as we did against Iraq.

Got that? Poor little old Iran is just looking to defend itself with military action against the mean old USA from the threat of …… sanctions. Oh, and Iran is building a nuclear bomb because the US and other nations have put sanctions on Iran. A little bit of Paul nuttiness.

But, wait, it gets better. Let’s jump in the wayback machine with Mr. Peabody, shall we?

See that guy in the middle? His name is Don Black. Why is this important? He’s the founder of Stormfront, a notorious neo-Nazi “white power” website. Paul supporters have tried to explain that away. Good luck with that if he is the GOP nominee for the General Election, when Team Obama, his surrogates, Democrats, and 90% of the media is giving us 30 second stories on it.

Oh, and then there’s this from 12/19/2007

Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul has received a $500 campaign donation from a white supremacist, and the Texas congressman doesn’t plan to return it, an aide said Wednesday.

Don Black, of West Palm Beach, recently made the donation, according to campaign filings. He runs a Web site called Stormfront with the motto, “White Pride World Wide.” The site welcomes postings to the “Stormfront White Nationalist Community.”

Good luck explaining that away during a General Election with an opponent who is half Black. Stormfront backed Ron Paul, and directed members to donate to the Paul 2008 campaign.

Michael Medved had an open letter to Ron Paul back in 2007

Dear Congressman Paul:

Your Presidential campaign has drawn the enthusiastic support of an imposing collection of Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Holocaust Deniers, 9/11 “Truthers” and other paranoid and discredited conspiracists.

Do you welcome- or repudiate – the support of such factions?

Much more to the letter, one which Dr. Paul failed to answer.

The links to those people mentioned in the letter run deep, whether Paul wants them or not. But, he never refutes them.

Back in 2007, people were wondering if he had paid Truther and conspiracy nut Alex Jones $1300 for services. Paul also took a donation from Jones, and only returned a part of it. Paul was a constant on Truther radio programs. He’s blamed the US. He’s taken the position that 9/11 was our fault. Good luck explaining that during a General Election.

The information goes on and on and on and on (great old article at The American Thinker by Andrew Walden and one on the Trutherism by Ace). Ron Paul may have some really great ideas. And Ron Paul supporters can go on about him standing for the constitution, the only free market Republican, only liberty candidate, gold standard, he’s stopping world governance, etc and so on, and if you don’t believe in him, you are a traitor, a liberal, a progressive, hate freedom, and so on. But, good luck explaining it all away while insulting people who do not support Paul.

I’m not here to tell you who to vote for. But, you need the information necessary to make a wise decision. Ron Paul would get obliterated in a General Election. There are way too many negatives, too many open skeletons in the closet. The MSM pretty much ignored and covered for Obama in regards to Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers. Do you honestly think they will do the same for Ron, or destroy him?

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

I have long pointed out on my sidebar on GREENIE WATCH that, just as “The Jews” were once blamed for every ill, so Global Warming is nowadays blamed for every ill. I will not try to spell out the similarities in any further detail but I think readers will see for themselves areas of similarity well enough. Even the first sentence could well apply to Warmism.

“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” are perhaps the best proof that the Nazis’ “Big Lie” theory — tell something long enough and loud enough, and some people are sure to believe it is true.

A fabrication of the Russian Secret Police between 1897 and 1903, the documents described a putative Jewish plot to take over the world. Their speciousness repeatedly proven over the years, they continue to fuel anti-Semitism: in Nazi Germany, in communist Russia, in anti-Semitic Arab countries, in the writings of Western racists and so on.

And “The Protocols,” translated into scores of languages, continue to live on in popular culture — a 2005 documentary, a new novel (“The Prague Cemetery”) by Italy’s Umberto Eco, a new nonfiction book (“License to Murder”) by Alex Grobman, director of the America-Israel Friendship League. The Jewish Week spoke with Grobman this week about “The Protocols.”

Q: More than a century after “The Protocols” were written — and discredited as a fraud — why are we still talking and worrying about them?

A: The myth of an international Jewish conspiracy to control the world as advanced in “The Protocols” has been exposed by historians, journalists, politicians, police and religious leaders. Yet this has not stopped “The Protocols” from being part of a view held by many people. The potential danger of “The Protocols” in shaping public opinion is real and should not be underestimated. When Jews are portrayed as manipulators who seek power over other people’s lives, they come — only naturally — to be perceived as severe dire threats.

It is thus particularly disconcerting that this false and harmful perception of Jews is embraced even today by the leadership of the Arab-Muslim world, where “The Protocols” continues to be published in vast quantities, and cited in the writings of mainstream academics, who lend credibility and legitimacy to this falsehood and utter fallacy.

Q. Who takes ‘The Protocols’ seriously today?

Aside from many in the Arab world, the belief that Jews have an inordinate amount of power in the world can also be found throughout the West as well. In September 2007, The Financial Times reported that “Currency Wars,” a Chinese bestseller, claimed “The Battle of Waterloo. The deaths of six U.S. presidents. The rise of Adolf Hitler. The deflation of the Japanese bubble economy, the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and even environmental destruction in the developing world,” which occurred over two centuries “have a single root cause: the control of money issuance through history by the Rothschild banking dynasty.”

Every time a friend returns from international theological conferences, he laments how pervasive the underlying belief in “The Protocols” is among leading theologians. Were you to confront them, they would be highly insulted, yet they accept the basic premise.

Jewish history is full of bogus accusations against Jews, like the blood libel. Why have “The Protocols” had such a lasting influence?

The notion of the Jew as a demonic character is still prevalent, allowing anti-Semites to use “The Protocols” to incite against Jews, particularly during times of political and social unrest. Conspiracy theories are attractive because they absolve the individual of any personal responsibility for failures, reverses and suffering. In this moral universe of “us” and “them,” the victim is not responsible at all for what has occurred. The conspirators are the ones who are culpable.

The fact that it was allegedly written by Jews makes the work more authentic. Reliance on contradiction— that to succeed Jews employ capitalism and communism, philo-Semitism and anti-Semitism, democracy and tyranny — made it possible for “The Protocols” to reach out to all: rich and poor, right and left, Christian and Muslim, American and Japanese.

Debating the advocates of “The Protocols” doesn’t work. Showing that “The Protocols” is a fraud doesn’t work. Banning the book — as some countries have tried — doesn’t work. What works?

Certain portions of the population will never be convinced that “The Protocols” are a forgery or that Jews are not an evil force trying to control the world. Logic and reason have little or no place in their way of thinking.

The purpose of [Grobman’s new book] is to inform those interested in historical truth why this canard and other lies against the Jewish people are so pervasive, and why they pose a danger not only to the Jewish people, but to all those who cherish a democratic way of life. If we do not respond to the canards, the assumption will be that we have no answers.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

(UK Guardian) The lesson the world is learning the hard way from the financial crisis is that there is only one boat and we are all in it. To stay afloat, we need rules tough enough to stop systemic risks becoming systemic collapses. This lesson is as true for the environment as it is for the economy.

A key battle in the campaign to build an effective system of global rules will shortly take place in Durban, where the UN climate negotiations reopen at the end of this month. The International Energy Agency has set the scene, with the timely warning in its new World Energy Outlook that we are way off track to avoid dangerous climate change, and that the window for effective action is closing fast.

Expect to see continued silly and unhinged writings as we approach the time when bureaucrats and politicians take unnecessary fossil fueled flights halfway around the world to tell us that fossil fueled flights are bad. Of course, we get this same alarmist every year for about the past 15 years in November, dire predictions of doom and gloom, as the time of the IPCC working vacations in awesome vacation spots approaches.

The choice between what needs to be done but looks impossible, and what can be done but is clearly not enough, is as old as history. It lay behind the struggle between Churchill and Halifax as Britain faced Hitler’s tanks on the Channel coast. Nato’s success in Libya was conducted against a barrage of predictions that it would lead to years of stalemate. When there is no alternative, realism lies in expanding the limits of the possible, not in nourishing the delusion that something else might help.

So, not doing anything about trace amounts of a harmless gas necessary for life, which has been at higher levels than today for most of the Earth’s 4.5 billion years in existence, is like ignoring the threat from Nazi Germany.

There really is no plan B for the climate. A voluntary framework will not be enough to keep us within the 2C limit of manageable climate change. Unmanageable climate change will precipitate systemic collapses, including of our food and water security. Success or failure will depend on governments convincing investors that they are determined to enact the policies necessary to drive private capital towards a low-carbon future. In the boardroom a voluntary pledge from a government sounds rather like “maybe”. That’s why in the UK we have set legally binding carbon budgets through the Climate Change Act.

So, only Big Government can save us, and they must force it on their citizens? Sounds kinda like…..fascism. And those legally binding carbon budgets are going to leave people in the dark, freezing to death, in England, which is supposed to have yet another below average and snowy/icy winter. Have fun with that!

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach. Please sign the drill now petition.

1). We only have the word of the Red Army for what they found in Hitler’s bunker and the old Soviet apparatus told lies as easily as some people tell the truth. They even had a word for such lies: “Disinformation” — with one of its more successful examples being the demonization of that great man of God, Pope Pius XII.

And it would have been a great disgrace for the Soviets if they had let Hitler slip through their fingers. So they would have claimed to have got him even if they had not — reasoning quite cogently that Hitler would not blow the cover that they had conveniently provided for him.

2). It is undisputed that many Nazis, including some senior ones, DID escape to South America. So if them, why not the Leader himself? He would only have had to manage a night flight from somewhere in the Reich to Fascist Spain and all his troubles would be over. A transfer from there to one of the South American dictatorships could have been arranged in a variety of ways. And the Latin American elite were at that time (and to a considerable extent still are) apostles of Bolivarism — which is just Fascism by another name, Fascism complete with a Fuehrerprinzip of course. So Hitler’s welcome would have been warm, though secretive.

And a night flight would not even have been particularly dangerous. It would be assumed by all concerned that only Allied aircraft would be in the air by that time and the profile of some German military aircraft was similar to the profile of some Allied aircraft (e.g. the Junkers 88 could be mistaken for a Mosquito bomber) so any challenge would be unlikely.

But the reason I doubt that Hitler escaped is that I cannot see him ever shutting up for long. The man was a born preacher so I am sure that if he had survived we would have eventually heard something from him in some way.

But if you want to read an interesting article offering evidence that he escaped, see here or here

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

The main thing that the article below is weak on is pointing out that many things considered Rightist today (such as patriotism) were strongly Leftist in the prewar era — and in fact continued to be so until some time after the war. JFK’s famous quotation from Pericles (“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country) was probably the last gasp of genuine patriotism on the American Left.

And Leftists of all sorts were great advocates of eugenics in Hitler’s day. And even Karl Marx was a great antisemite. Hitler was in fact a fairly mainstream leftist by the standards of his time. He just applied German thoroughness to Leftist ideas

The author below does make one slight mention of it but one of the most damning things about the American Left of the prewar era is that they were in fact a major source of Hitler’s ideas. I set out the details of that at some length here.

The article below is unreferenced but my monograph on the subject should supply all the references anyone needs –JR

By Bill Flax

“The line between fascism and Fabian socialism is very thin. Fabian socialism is the dream. Fascism is Fabian socialism plus the inevitable dictator.” John T. Flynn

Numerous commentators have raised alarming comparisons between America’s recent economic foibles and Argentina’s fall “from breadbasket to basket case.” The U.S. pursues a similar path with her economy increasingly ensnared under the growing nexus of government control. Resources are redistributed for vote-buying welfare schemes, patronage style earmarks, and graft by unelected bureaucrats, quid pro quo with unions, issue groups and legions of lobbyists.

In Argentina, everyone acknowledges that fascism, state capitalism, corporatism – whatever – reflects very leftwing ideology. Eva Peron remains a liberal icon. President Obama’s Fabian policies (Keynesian economics) promise similar ends. His proposed infrastructure bank is just the latest gyration of corporatism. Why then are fascists consistently portrayed as conservatives?

In the Thirties, intellectuals smitten by progressivism considered limited, constitutional governance anachronistic. The Great Depression had apparently proven capitalism defunct. The remaining choice had narrowed between communism and fascism. Hitler was about an inch to the right of Stalin. Western intellectuals infatuated with Marxism thus associated fascism with the Right.

Later, Marxists from the Frankfurt School popularized this prevailing sentiment. Theodor Adorno in The Authoritarian Personality devised the “F” scale to demean conservatives as latent fascists. The label “fascist” has subsequently meant anyone liberals seek to ostracize or discredit.

Fascism is an amorphous ideology mobilizing an entire nation (Mussolini, Franco and Peron) or race (Hitler) for a common purpose. Leaders of industry, science, education, the arts and politics combine to shepherd society in an all encompassing quest. Hitler’s premise was a pure Aryan Germany capable of dominating Europe.

While he feinted right, Hitler and Stalin were natural bedfellows. Hitler mimicked Lenin’s path to totalitarian tyranny, parlaying crises into power. Nazis despised Marxists not over ideology, but because they had betrayed Germany in World War I and Nazis found it unconscionable that German communists yielded fealty to Slavs in Moscow.

The National Socialist German Workers Party staged elaborate marches with uniformed workers calling one another “comrade” while toting tools the way soldiers shoulder rifles. The bright red Nazi flag symbolized socialism in a “classless, casteless” Germany (white represents Aryanism). Fascist central planning was not egalitarian, but it divvied up economic rewards very similarly to communism: party membership and partnering with the state.

Where communists generally focused on class, Nazis fixated on race. Communists view life through the prism of a perpetual workers’ revolution. National Socialists used race as a metaphor to justify their nation’s engagement in an existential struggle.

More HERE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Knowing little about former Utah Governor John Huntsman, except that he was hand-picked by Barack Obama to be his man in China, it was revealing to learn through his recent statements that he belongs to “the debate is over” crowd. The “debate is over” crowd never bellows louder than when it comes to global warming and evolution. They are the people who push fiction as if it were fact and then denigrate anyone who disagrees.

Huntsman revealed a major unawareness of current scientific data when he attacked fellow presidential candidate Rick Perry (TX-R) on his position on evolution and global warming during an ABC interview stating:

“I think there’s a serious problem. The minute that the Republican Party becomes the …

anti-science party, we have a huge problem … When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said … I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science and, therefore, in a losing position.”

Huntsman’s statements are misleading and rife with misinformation. Huntsman misleads by stating that 98 to a 100 climate scientists support global warming, but leaves out the documented fact that some 33,000 scientists worldwide consider man-made global warming to be total nonsense. The carbon-credits scheme is proving to be a scam. Yet, Huntsman appears to be a man after Al Gore’s heart. Huntsman would do well to Google the article: GLOBAL FRAUDS: AL GORE & CHARLES DARWIN at:

http://darwinsracists.com/book/?p=62.

On the topic of evolution, Huntsman joins the more strident “the debate is over” crowd as he personally “embraces” evolution. Even Barack Obama was quick to give a “shout-out to Charles Darwin on his 150th birthday.” Evolution is mere theory without empirical scientific data to support it. As a life-devaluing, God-denying, racist theory, evolution was readily embraced by Karl Marx, the father of Communism, who wrote that he was “a devoted admirer” of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. Others who anxiously “embraced” evolution were murderous tyrant Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky — who fanatically persecuted the Christian church while claiming that Darwin’s ideas “intoxicated him.” Another avid fan of evolution was Soviet mass murderer Joseph Stalin who became a devout atheist after determining that evolution does not require conscience or morals. One politician of note who “embraced” evolution was Adolf Hitler who was an avid follower and wrote in his book, Mein Kampf, that he believed in “natural selection” and the “survival of the fittest” as propagated by Darwin. Hitler’s reign resulted in the murder of some 6 million Jews as well as Slavs, Poles, Blacks, Gypsies, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled and other groups he deemed unfit to live.” (Excerpts from book: Darwin’s Racists – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.)

Darwin’s theory of evolution became a political tool for murderous tyrants who used it as a mechanism to devalue life, justify racism by labeling various groups of humans as less evolved, and as a means to eradicate God so that the “state” could become god to the people. Avid American abortionist and purported mother of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, embraced evolution as an argument for abortions and the denial of care for America’s poor, sick, elderly and disabled.

Where evolution and Huntsman lose legitimacy is when both face the advancements of hard science in the 21st century. DNA proteins are providing evidence against the possibility of evolution and reveal that no species can “jump its DNA code” to evolve into another species. Even in his rudimentary analysis Charles Darwin wrote: “When we descend to details, we cannot prove that a single species has changed.” Evolution scientists themselves are abandoning the theory in droves and have gone so far to say, “That it ought not to be taught in High School.” Yet, Huntsman’s opponent did not take it that far. In what appears to be a balanced approach, Governor Rick Perry did say that both evolution and creation are taught in Texas schools because he thought students would be smart enough to decide for themselves. Even Charles Darwin professed serious doubts about the validity of his theory of evolution vs. creation and wrote that: “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” Charles Darwin. At least, Darwin got that one right.

WHEN we survey some of the more controversial incidents of recent times, from the attempts to place restrictions on poker machine players to the suspension of live cattle exports to Indonesia, there is a connecting thread that almost everyone has missed. This is the return of the wowser.

Wowsers (We Only Want Social Evils Remedied) are traditionally as Australian as meat pies and Holden cars.

They were responsible for Australian institutions such as the six o’clock closing and the shutting of shops on Sundays.

One would have thought that they had receded into the annals of history as Australians became more liberal on these sorts of issues. Shopping is now very much a Sunday experience and Australians are used to the idea of civilised drinking.

But wowserism has never really gone away and, like any great tradition, has bided its time waiting for new opportunities. It has simply changed its spots. Once it had a strong religious colouring; now it is taking on an increasingly secular tone.

Wowsers want to improve people and make them better. To do so they have to prevent them from engaging in activities that they find immoral: be it gambling, eating meat, drinking alcohol, smoking or consuming junk food.

My father used to say that for such people if you were enjoying yourself there must be sin involved.

I have no doubt that behind the ruckus about live meat exports there is a vegetarian agenda, based on the idea that vegetarians are better people than meat eaters. If we limit gambling we can make people better. And, as we all know, it is a fact universally acknowledged that there is not a bogan out there who could not do with some improvement.

In days gone by, the ideals of wowserdom were often linked with those of eugenics. People could be improved if only their habits and lifestyle were changed; if only they lived a more rational way of life.

Eugenics has often been misunderstood. For one thing it was embraced in countries such as Australia by people who considered themselves to be progressive, who we would describe as being on the left. For another it was as much about changing the environment as it was about selective breeding. It was about making better people.

It was not only Nazi Germany that engaged in activities such as sterilising the unfit. Many countries, including democracies, sought to improve their populations in this way.

It was not politics so much as religion that determined whether a government would seek to go down this road. Protestants generally did, Catholics did not. Fortunately, Australia had a significant Catholic minority.

In a slightly different vein it is worth observing that Hitler and his fellow Nazis were very concerned about cruelty to animals and introduced legislation that made Germany a world leader in this area. They restricted their cruelty only to those people whom they regarded as inferior, all in the name of improving the human race.

Wowsers and eugenicists generally go together as they see the key to a better world lying in the creation of better human beings. Eradicate evils and that will be possible.

The idea that it is the task of the government to improve the people who are entrusted to their care is very dangerous. Are people who do not eat meat or play the poker machines really better than those who do? Do we want the state to attempt to create a utopia of good people who have had their bad bits excised?

It is not surprising that wowserism should come to prominence again in tandem with the growing strength of the Greens. The Greens are the latest manifestation of a sort of moralistic puritanism that has been part of Australia since the First Fleet. Australians must change their evil ways. The Greens see themselves as the enforcers who will achieve that change, thereby leading the country into the sustainable utopia.

In such a utopia the status of animals would rise and that of humans fall. It is no longer necessary to sterilise the unfit. With the advance of medicine they can be detected and disposed of while still in the womb.

The only problem is that maybe ordinary Australians do not want to be improved in this way. As in the past, they enjoy their gambling, their steaks and their booze. They simply want to enjoy life.

Wowsers are part of the Australian tradition but they have always been in the minority.

Their grand plans for the people of this country have always run up against the reality that most people are happy to be less than perfect. On that rock the Greens will ultimately founder.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

The Atlantic’s Yoni Appelbaum has a troubled little mind. He seems to be an excitable sort, too. I say this because during this 150th anniversary of the American Civil War he strangely sees evil Confederate, German, Nazi, racists at Civil War events. He might want to see a therapist about this. Either that or he’s just another left-wing writer that is striving so hard to find something, anything, to write about that he’s put aside common sense and instead decided to illicitly impute any manner of absurd motivations to Germany’s Civil War reenactors. You know, because he wants to be considered the thoughtful type, because this sort of tripe is what passes for intellectualism in journalism.

Appelbaum’s article on Germans that reenact the American Civil War is entirely absurd, of course. He imputes all sorts of motives, dark and evil, to a mere hobby. He sees shadows of low and dangerous undercurrents to this pastime and desperately tries to tie a plethora of evils into the harmless fun of dressing up as a soldier from some 150 years ago.

Appelbaum finds that many Germans reenact the American Civil War in Germany as Confederate soldiers and this troubles him. He notes that Germans that reenact the American Civil War as Confederates are play-acting contrary to their own pre-WWII cultural history because few Germans fought for the South in the conflict. In this he is correct. But after getting one thing right, Appelbaum launches off into paroxysms of agonized fantasy. One gets the feeling he is not writing to explore truths but is writing to get the knowing and concerned nods of other wacky leftists like himself.

Of course it is true that most Germans that immigrated to America in the decades previous to the American Civil War ended up fighting for the union (my own ancestor included). In fact, even the German immigrants that moved to the South fought for the North or fought southern authorities on their own hook deep in Southern territory. Texas is a prime example of that for in the Lone Star State some German communities launched into open rebellion against Confederate authorities causing a small civil war in the greater Civil War. So at some level it really is a bit of a weird juxtaposition to see modern Germans wanting to reenact the American Civil War as Confederates when their ancestors fought overwhelmingly for the Union during that great conflict.

But, let’s face it. This is just a hobby we are talking about here. People reenact the Civil War not because they want to preserve slavery, as Southerners did, or want to fight to “save the union,” as Northerners did, but just to have some fun and indulge a little fantasy. They just want to escape the modern world for a few days.

Motivations differ from reenactor to reenactor, of course. Many are deeply interested and fascinated by history. Some want to “preserve” history for their own generation and those to come. Others just like to play shoot ‘em up. Some like doing things out-of-doors and still others just like the camaraderie of a military-like organization. Motivations to join such a hobby is no different for Civil War reenactors than it is for WWII reenactors, French-Indian War guys, Wild West enactors, Napoleonic Wars guys, American Revolutionary War folks, Medieval reenactors, or what have you. The fact is that nearly every western nation has reenactors representing many of their own historic eras, most, but not all, of them military related.

Regardless of what reenactors are doing when they reenact, Appelbaum hyperbolically sees shades of Nazism in German Civil War reenactors. Like the child shaking under the sheets sure that he sees a monster in the closet at night, Applebaum thinks that there is a racist, Nazi related motivation for any German that wants to reenact the American Civil War on the Confederate side.

They [the Germans] have missed only one thing. In their search for an anodyne conflict, lacking the baggage of their historical wars of mastery, these Germans have taken a wrong turn. The units they prefer to recreate fought to preserve an abhorrent system that kept more than three million men, women, and children in bondage while denying their very humanity.

Well, if you are going to do the American Civil War someone has to take the side of the slavocracy, right? I mean it would be hard to fight mock battles if everyone was a federal soldier!

That explanation, though, is too simple for Appelbaum, apparently. He sees the dark arts bubbling underneath the fun of a mock battle.

No, the problem is that in Nazi Germany, the glamor [sic] extended beyond the magnolias and the melodrama. Hermann Rauschnning, in his memoir, alleged that Hitler regretted the outcome of the Civil War. A literal master-race, holding those it deemed inferior in hereditary bondage: this was the Confederate vision as the Nazis approvingly understood it. It was what they saw when they watched Gone with the Wind.

And, gosh, if that wasn’t enough to prove that all German reenactors that dress for the C.S.A. aren’t at least subconscious Nazis, Appelbaum found one of those “experts” that his sort of writer always love to trot out for deep think pieces like this.

Wolfgang Hochbruck, a Professor of American Studies at the University of Freiburg and a Union reenactor, is less charitable. “I think some of the Confederate reenactors in Germany are acting out Nazi fantasies of racial superiority,” he told author Tony Horwitz. “They are obsessed with your war because they cannot celebrate their own vanquished racists.” It’s an unsettling thought.

Leave it to a left-wing, pseudo intellectual journalist to find a pin-headed, university blowhard to confirm his outlandish thesis, eh?

Listen, the whole thing is like imputing deep philosophical reasoning to the mind of a soccer hooligan or like assuming heavily thought out motivations from a basketball fan. There just ain’t no there, there. Being that we are talking humanity, it would not be surprising to find a tiny minority of German Civil War reenactors that pick the Confederates because they themselves are racists or lean toward Nazi ideology. I am sure that in any group of anybody you can find a racist or a Nazi or two. But to assume that such a minority would be large enough have any real affect to the entire hobby of Civil War reenacting either in the USA or Germany is simply a reach beyond good sense.

There is also one last thing that makes Appelbaum’s outlandish concept untenable. The French like to reenact as Confederates alot too. Are the French all just like the Nazis? Oh, and the Brits, Irish and Scots have hundreds of Confederate reenactors on their isles, too. Are they all secret Nazis? Why do we have many thousands of Confederate reenactors across the world but only the Germans do it because they are all secret Nazis?

Like I said, for this stretch of a concept there’s just no there, there. But I am sure that Appelbaum’s left-wing buddies will all pat him on the back for this deep analysis of a hobby where guys dress up like Civil War soldiers.

For the rest of us, let us just shake our heads in bewilderment at another leftist seeing monsters under his bed at night while assuming that everyone but he and his left-wing pals are lunatics, haters, Nazis, and racists.

Nazism was in most ways very German. Hitler’s socialism was, for instance, just a follow-on from the welfare state invented in the 19th century by Bismarck, Prussia’s “Iron Chancellor”. And nationalism was so pervasive in Germany that even Friedrich Engels (co-author with Karl Marx of “Das Kapital”) was a fierce German nationalist

THE world must follow Britain’s lead on nuclear power if it wants to curb greenhouse gases, not that of Germany, which is to scrap all its nuclear plants by 2022, a former government chief scientist said. Germany’s plan to close all its 17 nuclear power stations is an overreaction to the earthquake disaster at the Fukushima plant in Japan, Professor Sir David King said.

The International Energy Agency said that its latest estimates of carbon emissions would make it almost impossible to stop a global temperature rise of more than 2C (3.6F). Fatih Birol, its chief economist, said: “This significant increase in CO2 emissions and the locking in of future emissions due to infrastructure investments represent a serious setback to our hopes of limiting the global rise in temperature to no more than 2C.”

Sir David, who as Chief Scientist described climate change as a bigger threat than terrorism, told The Times that it would be difficult to reverse this trend if more countries followed Germany in rejecting nuclear power as a low-carbon source of energy.

“It is worrying,” he said. “I think it would be a big surprise if Germany can achieve the same targets as Britain for decarbonising its energy supply without nuclear.”

Germany plans to disconnect eight of its oldest reactors almost immediately, of which seven had been shut for three months of safety tests after Fukushima. Six more will shut by the end of 2021 and the three most modern will shut the following year.

Sir David said that Britain had acted more sensibly than Germany by commissioning a technical report from Mike Weightman, the nuclear chief inspector, which concluded that the Fukushima incident had little relevance to plans to build a new generation of nuclear plants.

“The British Government’s decision is based on a technical analysis of risk and a thorough examination of the lessons learnt from Fukushima, which has rightly not deflected it from its plans,” Sir David said. “If other countries wish to follow an example, they should look at Britain’s response rather than Germany’s.”

The IEA figures, Sir David said, were no surprise, because carbon emissions’ link to economic growth was well established. “Global GDP is still heavily powered by fossil fuels, so the recovery after the global recession, which has been stronger in developing countries, was expected to bring carbon emissions back up.”

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, hopes the nuclear plan will steal some of the Greens’ electoral territory, and possibly make them potential coalition partners in a future federal Government.

But the plan, which means the country must find 22 per cent of its electricity from other sources, has been questioned by German industrialists. Dieter Zetschke, head of Daimler, said: “Turning our backs on an affordable energy source is clearly a risk. I see certain risks ahead for Germany as a place to do business.”

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Indiana’s highest court has turned against our rights and the Constitution of the United States. The Supreme Court of Indiana has just decided that the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution does not apply to the citizens of Indiana.

The court has decided that Hoosiers have no right to be safe in their own homes from illegal entry, search, and seizure by police. Indiana’s highest court has just said that Hoosier stormtrooers can invade any home at any time and citizens have no right to resist because it is “against public policy.”

Blogger Bruce McQuain said this appalling incident in Indiana is an example of, “why you have to constantly protect your rights daily from attacks from within,” and boy is he right.

NorthwestIndiana.com pinpoints the problem perfectly.

Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

The Supreme Court has decided that the right to be safe in one’s own home is not as important as the state being allowed to batter down people’s doors at will. Justice Steven David averred that there are enough protections of homeowners after they are accosted illicitly by police, after they’ve been arrested and possibly physically harmed, and after the state has caused them to spend untold thousands of dollars on their own bail and defense in the courts.

“We believe … a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence,” David said. “We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest.”

This turns natural rights on its head and alters the basic compact between citizen and government in the USA. It takes us from an “innocent until proven guilty” premise to one where citizens have no rights at all unless the state deigns to allow them.

Now, the argument that the anti-constitutionalists make almost sounds sensible at first blush. This ruling, they say, is merely meant to prevent any chance that the actions of a homeowner in a given situation will “escalate the level of violence.” If homeowners sit meekly by and allow police to illegally enter their home, why the level of violence won’t grow. We need to protect the lives of our police, right?

Almost logical, eh?

The problem is that with a rule such as this in place, the police have no real reason to be sure that they are in the right when battering down a homeowner’s door in the first place. Freed from this onerous requirement to be 100% sure, they will find themselves battering down doors with little provocation because, hey, THEY are covered by the law from being wrong. THEY don’t need to be sure that the home they are invading is the right home, one inhabited by real criminals. Why, it can all be cleared up later, right? So the citizen can just shut up, sit down, and take this violation of his rights.

That’s right, you, the citizen, can just shut up, taste the cop’s boot heels, and maybe (if you are lucky) some judge down the line might agree with you that your rights were violated and, gosh, they need to mumble an apology to you sometime.

As McQuain said, this is proof of why we need to zealously protect our rights and fight for them every day.

It is also proof that our legal system is badly breaking down. It is proof of yet another thing, too. It is proof that these “judges” have no fear of the people. The Indiana Supreme Court judges that voted in support of this outrageous decision should all be thrown off the bench if not by outright impeachment, then at least in the next election.

But, I’d rather see impeachment, as opposed to election turnovers. Our elected politicians need to begin to systematically eliminate judges of this sort who have turned against the US Constitution. These people need to fear for their jobs. Impeachment of these un-American monsters has never been used enough and we should start doing it ASAP.

When even a red state such as Indiana starts turning against our natural rights, we know our governments have turned against we the people.