Birds of a Feather

Nixon to Kissinger:

We’ve got to destroy the confidence of the people in the American establishment.

Mao to the Red Guards:

Bombard the headquarters.

9 Comments

  1. Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant September 24, 2015 at 4:07 pm | #

    Translation: Government can’t be trusted to do anything right. As everyone knows, this is the mantra of the modern conservative and is the religion of the corporatist neoliberal.

  2. Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant September 24, 2015 at 4:21 pm | #

    Get the book that is referenced here.

    I regard it as a masterpiece of muckraking analysis of the conservative pathology. Sadly, it has not gotten the “play” that his previous book, a bestseller, has.

    The work that realizes Nixon’s call “to destroy the confidence of the people in the American establishment” is given a full review therein. It is the reason I have been inclined to find conservatism not merely a political movement, but evidence of something darker.

    Here is a taste:

    • G Hiatt September 25, 2015 at 9:04 am | #

      Yes, Franks book (along with The Reactionary Mind) really opened my eyes to what these people were really all about…namely, destroying democracy, taking back power from the “mob”, and restoring it to the “natural elite”.

      “Secession and privatization are the primary vehicles and means by which to overcome democracy and establish a natural order.
      […]
      Nothing is more effective in persuading the masses to cease cooperating with government than the constant and relentless exposure, de-sanctification, and ridicule of government and its representatives as moral and economic frauds and impostors: as emperors without clothes subject to contempt and the butt of all jokes.”
      […]
      “The natural outcome of the voluntary transactions between various private property owners is decidedly non-egalitarian, hierarchical, and elitist. As the result of widely diverse human talents, in every society of any degree of complexity a few individuals quickly acquire the status of an elite. Owing to superior achievements of wealth, wisdom, bravery or a combination thereof, some individuals come to possess “natural authority” – HH Hoppe (Democracy-The God That Failed)

      Their end game is a Neo-Ancien Régime.

      • Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant September 25, 2015 at 11:01 am | #

        “Yes, Franks book (along with The Reactionary Mind) really opened my eyes to what these people were really all about…namely, destroying democracy, taking back power from the “mob”, and restoring it to the “natural elite”.”

        True, dat! Can a brother get an “Amen!”

        I often reference both books when I consider with other people what “conservatism” is. I have to say that conservatism constitutes an intriguing dynamic: a constellation of seriously considered ideas in reply to democratic movements, ideas that once acted as a praxis suggest not so much those ideas as they do some kind of ill will (and I use the word “ill” to suggest its two most commonly referenced meanings: bad faith and sickness) towards one fellow human beings.

  3. Donald Pruden, Jr., a/k/a The Enemy Combatant September 25, 2015 at 11:14 am | #

    And another thing.

    Not for nothing has Corey juxtaposed the Nixon/Kissinger reference with Mao, beyond the Nixon in China thing. Given the particular quote from Mao, I am moved to post this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiH_LzKe2m4

    And this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=garqIzNZvz8 (sorry, I can’t kill the ad)

    Here, “neoliberalism” makes a dramatic entrance onto the world stage, but its name is not yet known to all at the time as far as I can tell. When it comes home to the U.S. its devastation is only less dramatic in how it looks.

    I suppose one could call the end of Bretton Woods Nixon’s “other” neoliberalist coup d’etat.

    OK, I’ll shut up now….

  4. Harold September 28, 2015 at 3:45 pm | #

    @Donald Pruden Jr
    I keep finding reasons to spread this link around:

    http://weeklysift.com/2014/08/11/not-a-tea-party-a-confederate-party/

    At least from an American perspective, could this be the most clear expression of intent of the “divine right to rule” that we have seen – the mentality that caused Nixon to pursue “the Southern Strategy” in the first place?

  5. gstally October 4, 2015 at 2:18 am | #

    “I would be losing my own constituency.”

    Well there’s a mouthful.

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