The Trouble with Victor Davis Hanson

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Thursday November 24, 2005 · 6:41 AM PST

2005/11/24 · 06:41

A couple of years ago I read "The Soul of Battle," by Victor Davis Hanson, now the Hoover Insitute's main cheerleader for the Iraq War and head Arab-hater. Hanson describes three inspiring instances of aggressive military leaders destroying violent slaveholding societies - Epimamondas' (sp?) devastation of Sparta, Sherman's thrust into the Deep South, and finally Patton's Third Army's fighting in Eastern France and Western Germany (Hanson ignores the fact that the Red Army did most of the work of destroying the Wehrmacht). He makes the important point that all three of these generals won their victories by avoiding major set-piece battles and minimizing casualties. In many ways an inspiring book, in particular in its takedown of Southern whining about Sherman's march. So what's the problem? Read More

Armando says: Read "From the Cold War to Iraq: Bloodlust"

enlightenmentman

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Wednesday November 23, 2005 · 8:43 AM PST

2005/11/23 · 08:43

I am an academic and I am trained to write rigorously with source citations and etc. But this is a personal story and a story of bitter, personal anger at those who are turning my country into an excrement pile. And so, while I think I make good points, it is not footnoted, it is anecdotal, it is flawed. Read it for what it is worth. I cannot remain silent about the insanity that I have personally witnessed growing like a cancer in America.

In the late 1980s I had a series of arguments with a family friend, no longer a friend, a generation older than I, who had spent most of his career involved in US naval war planning... Read More

Yglesias is a Harvard wunderkind!

enlightenmentman

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Monday October 03, 2005 · 8:42 PM PDT

2005/10/03 · 20:42

Who is Yglesias? He's a maybe 25 year old kid who, far as I can tell, went straight from being Harvard wunderkind to the American Prospect. A smart kid who's probably never cleaned toilets, worked hot days in the sun, or even worked the counter at a convenience store. Read More

Why was I protesting alone when the Supreme Court Stole the 2000 election?

enlightenmentman

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Saturday October 01, 2005 · 2:17 AM PDT

2005/10/01 · 02:17

OK, Mr. Obama, centrist yes, appeal to thinking Republicans and libertarians, yes. But w/r/t the Democratic Party

Why was I standing ALONE in front of the Arkansas State House protesting the day the Supreme Court stole the 2000 election from Gore? I called the local Democratic Party and they were wholly uninterested in organizing.
Why was it that when I attended anti-Iraq war rallies (I supported the Afghan war) that the only organizations present were Maoists and Trotskyites? Where the hell was the Democratic Party?
Why was it that Howard Dean was villified as a far-left Communist by many "centrist" Democrats, when many of his positions were the right of Clinton.

We need ALL progressives to win.

enlightenmentman

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Wednesday September 28, 2005 · 5:58 PM PDT

2005/09/28 · 17:58

The debates here about whether anti-war demonstrations work, whether to be loud-and-proud angry liberals or quiet persuaders, etc., seem to me to be silly. The right wing has built a multi-layered propaganda machine through which different messages can be delivered to different very specifically targeted audiences. This is also what the Soviet regime did, by the way, although eventually the lies became too big for any propaganda machine to handle. I doubt that progressives can build as tightly disciplined a message machine as the Republicans have, or that we would even want to. But we do need more coordination. AND, we need EVERYONE. Read More

Kerry campaign manager clueless

enlightenmentman

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Thursday December 16, 2004 · 7:23 AM PST

2004/12/16 · 07:23

Mary Beth Cahill admits in a Harvard University forum (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=694&ncid=703&e=1&u=/ap/20041216/ap_o n_el_pr/bush_kerry_managers)on the campaign that she "underestimated" impact of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advertisements! Perhaps we should have responded earlier, she says.

This is frickin' outrageous. From talking to my college students and neighbors I knew that charges like this would stick unless the Kerry campaign counterattacked immediately. Cahill, Brazile, etc. learned NOTHING from the 2000 campaign when Gore tried to take the high road while he was being savaged as a liar and mentally unstable.

When are the so-called "professionals" running Democratic political campaigns going to understand that we are in a bar fight with thugs? They need to spend some time on the street with activists such as myself having people screaming "baby-killer," "faggot," and "Communist" at them. This news item about Cahill is the best argument yet for Dean as DNC chair. I'm nauseated. Read More

Letter to Bill Safire

enlightenmentman

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Thursday November 04, 2004 · 12:46 PM PST

2004/11/04 · 12:46

Mr. Safire:
Thank you for your conciliatory column. As a centrist Democrat, however, I am not feeling in a conciliatory mood. I assume that you would classify yourself as a thinking conservative. Well, you thinking conservatives have tolerated, and indeed deliberately cultivated bigotry and hatred and outright lies (for example, about the missing 350 tons of explosives in Iraq) for too long. I have seen some of the vile gay-hating leaflets sent out by local Republican organizations ...see for more
http://enlightenmentman.blogspot.com/2004/11/letter-to-bill-safire.html

Contact media on GOP Ohio Voter Suppression Effort

enlightenmentman

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Friday October 29, 2004 · 12:09 PM PDT

2004/10/29 · 12:09

I think Kossacks need to focus their efforts for Nov. 2 and I'd suggest two -- the obvious GOTV and also on CONTACTING MEDIA (even local outlets) AND URGING THEM TO COVER GOP EFFORTS TO SUPPRESS VOTING IN OHIO. The Ohio Voter Suppression site just set up and diaried on dailykos will help. You can refer reporters/editors to it. Below, in the Extended Entry are links to Josh Marshall's coverage of the issue. Marshall in turn has good links to "mainstream" media coverage. Ed Kilgore at www.NewDonkey.com is also covering things.
Call reporters and editors, even at local papers outside Ohio, explain that you believe that popular sovereignty expressed through voting for representatives in Congress is basic to American democracy, and urge them to cover this story.
Read More

America's Stalinist Right

enlightenmentman

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Tuesday October 26, 2004 · 9:51 AM PDT

2004/10/26 · 09:51

It is a cliché of American conservatives that liberal and even centrist Democrats are sympathetic to Communism. Yet today it is the Republican Party leadership and rank-and-file right-wing activists who are using Stalinist techniques in an attempt to intimidate opposition, create an alternate, ideologically-based "reality," and enforce acceptance of that false "reality." Behind these techniques is an even more frightening reality - Stalinist-style rhetoric and ways of thought now dominate the political discourses of the American Right. Read More

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