Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For June 24, 2020

June 19

To R. Scott Clark and his blogpost video on Maoism both then and now. This appeared in the Heidelblog.

Though the totalitarian rule of Mao is blamed on Marxism by some, in reality, totalitarianism and other degrees of authoritarianism  can come from vanguard movements. And such movements can emerge in any nation regardless of its political system or prominent political ideologies.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks were also a vanguard operation--something they recognized about themselves. And as such, just like the Tsars before them, they portrayed themselves as representing the proletariat revolution that the dissidents to the Bolsheviks were brutally treated as enemies of the people. The Tsars before them had so portrayed themselves  in the same way as well and regarded those who dissented as enemies of Russia.

Though being less authoritarian than the Tsars, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and Mao, both the Republican and Democratic parties act as vanguards with the former portraying itself as the vanguard for American traditions, especially conservative ones, and the latter one as the vanguard for the marginalized. In truth, both major political parties are bought and paid for by wealthy elites.

And as for the authoritarianism, Scott should comment on how Trump has threatened all protesters, including peaceful ones, who would protest his Tulsa visit with violence.

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June 23

To Pat Buchanan and his blogpost that criticizes the tearing down of statues that celebrated America’s past heroes. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

Buchanan is right about the purpose of status. It is for paying tribute and honoring people.

But where Buchanan has problems is in charging America's youth and the left with hating America's past, its history and its heroes.  It isn't that the tearing down of statues by mobs, not by the government, is not an act of hate. But the question Buchanan never considers is this: Who hated whom first? Or more pointedly, who hated whom the most?

Whether we are talking about Columbus with his multiple atrocities against the natives he discovered in Hispaniola, Jefferson and Washington with their owning of slaves and desires on Native American land to the West, Grant with his fighting against Native Americans, Francis Scott Key with his owning of slaves and celebrating the terrorizing of American slaves in the 3rd verse of the National Anthem, and finally the Confederate leaders who not only believed in white supremacy but fought to defend slavery and the race-based practice of treating people as mere property. Even with Roosevelt and Father Junípero Serra practiced or promoted racism. Can Buchanan say that such practices and attitudes were not acting out of hatred for their victims? Or does Buchanan not ask such questions about past heroes?

Did Buchanan object to Russians tearing down statues of Stalin and Lenin or the American military tearing down a statue of Saddam Hussein? I don't think so. And if I am right, isn't Buchanan practicing a double standard by objecting to the tearing down of statues of those who caused the suffering of so  many people?

While I don't approve of mobs tearing down statues because that is our government’s job, is the tearing down of statues the epitome of hatred?

When we look at the atrocities practiced to make this nation what it is today, shouldn't we hate some of America's past? Or should tribalism with its moral relativity be the rule of the day?