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Posted July 29, 2002
McCarthy
I always find your articles informative, well reasoned and well written.
I'm Jewish, but I'm not a Zionist. I very much agree with your assessment of Israel, and I admire your courage for speaking the truth, or at least enunciating a rational alternative to the officially sanctioned truth.
I was however confused by something in your article, "I Have In My Hands a List," which I found on the Etherzone site. You state in the text that those famous words were spoken by a great patriot. However when the link connected to McCarthy's actual quote is accessed, the ensuing historical summary portrays the senator in a distinctly negative light.
Just to be straightforward about it, as for myself, I've always regarded McCarthy as a political opportunist, who cynically exploited the threat of domestic communist activity in order to satiate his hunger for power and prestige....
Precursors to the Decline
It is seldom that I disagree with Raimondo, and when there is a disagreement it is over minor facts. Such is the case today [July 24, "Decline and Fall"].
The choice of comparisons with the crash of 1929 are meaningless to most of our population. The depression began in 1932, and did not begin to end until 1938. The Democrats point with pride how the social programs under Roosevelt were so successful in bringing that catastrophe to an end. While there is no question that he kept some people eating, the true cause of our recovery was the war in Europe which put our industrial capacity into action. Even those of us who lived through that period were unaware of the full impact of what was happening. Living in a middle class neighborhood, and attending a middle class school left me unaware of the suffering of others until 1936. At that time my mother became the chairwoman of the committee on welfare for the American Legion Auxiliary. We then started going to the camps outside of Stockton, California, where we saw encamped those who had come looking for work in the agricultural economy. When they arrived they found it to be a myth. Steinbeck was not a bit wrong in his description. When I arrived at high school in 1938, those kids from the camps were not treated as equals. There was a distinct disdain toward them. My point is that few people alive today have a real concept of what happened. Thus, my disagreement with Raimondo using an argument with which so few people can relate.
As to Wallerstein's article. I thought is was beautiful when I first read it. However, I don't think he goes back far enough in searching for the start of the decline. That may have been when Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory. There was nothing in the Constitution which allowed him to do so. Thus, he changed the meaning of that document by default. Certainly, Abraham Lincoln changed the document by his illegal actions in the War Between the States. We declined morally when we did not keep our promise to the Philippines to give them freedom from Spain. Not only that. We killed at least a million of them who thought we had meant that promise. These I cite only to say that it is my belief that such small steps were precursors to the decline and fall we are facing.
As an aside, the Shrub says, "We are good people." Where are the good people hiding?
All of you are to be congratulated on the fine job you are doing. My only complaint is that I find in following you I am losing people I thought were friends.
The Constitution
Just read John Spritzler's letter to Backtalk. It sounds like he's been reading Lysander Spooner, one of my favorite authors! Great points all around, John has it exactly right: as long as the majority of the citizens believe that we can be bound by a set of rules we didn't agree to, the statists have all of us by the short ones.
~ Carter Mitchell, Gurnee, Illinois
Security
[Regarding "Department of Homeland Security -- Who Needs It?"]
A government that started out with pledges to decrease the size and reach of the government was just fooling us It can only be behaving as it does because it really wants total control of the world.
What will President Bush have when he is King of the Planet?
Not security -- plenty of people will be trying all the time to take it away.
Not money -- he has buckets of it, and plenty of friends who will get him as much more as he wants.
He may preside over a republic of insects and grass if he goes forward with his plans for a first nuclear strike.
In any case, so much the worse for us.
These evil people must be removed from any position of authority.
Romania
I'm ... from Romania, an ex-communist country in Eastern Europe. Please allow me to tell you that, for me, your [Justin Raimondo's] articles are, in these crazy days we are living in, just like Valium (less the addiction and hangover). I appreciate your articles, besides your "revisionism" (alleged by some morons as "communism"), because you show that you have a real culture. Hence, I really understand why folks do not appreciate your comments: you are making them get aware of their lack of culture. As a "survivor" of Dictator Ceausescu's regime I'm appalled to see how civil liberty is systematically destroyed in America, country of legendary freedom of speech. Personally, before 1990, I knew what meant to be surrounded by psychotic busybodies and political police, to have a foot stuck in your mouth.
Bulgaria
[Regarding Emilija K.'s letter of July 22:]
...Macedonians cannot have been oppressed by Bulgarians prior to 1878 simply because prior to that they were nothing but Bulgarians. You might show some conscientiousness here and check the Ottoman archives -- and this is just one possible source. There you will read explicitly that the majority of the population of Macedonia (note, no mention of Macedonians as an ethnic group) is ethnically Bulgarian. As to the Bulgaria after 1878, I cannot see any oppression of Macedonians then as well, since Bulgaria was anyway fighting to solve the so many problems of its own, caused by the Berlin Treaty.
I do remember, however, that the Bulgarian population of Macedonia went on a large number of uprisings for the sake of counteracting the dictates of this same treaty (namely, that borders should be cut through people's houses, that families should be divided or chased away from their homes and so on). And that simply because (according to Austrian foreign policy documents) Macedonia had to remain "a no one's land" and its population had to be brought up with the consciousness of being no one....
Yes, there was abuse at one moment in our history when Macedonia was occupied by Bulgarian troops during World War II. But the abuse of power again did not come from the people (most of whom were simply happy to go back home and were met accordingly), it came from the wicked minds of a handful of politicians who would order that a whole village be burned for God knows what reason (that comes from the memories of my grandfather, who was then a soldier). Yet normal people have their way of counteracting even that form of madness -- the Bulgarian soldiers, facing this command from their chiefs, had the choice to disobey and be sentenced to death or think up something else. So they went around the houses telling the people to take their property out, warning them of what was going to happen and then set the houses on fire....
Without us you would not exist. There was no concept of a "Macedonian people" before this concept was thought up to serve the interests of the Communist International and particularly of Communist Yugoslavia. No ancient source names anything like a Macedonian people....
Your whole history is actually Bulgarian history. Your language is a dialect of Bulgarian and that's why you have words like "ubav" that are to be found only in Bulgarian and -- for example Persian -- a language related to the language of my forefathers, but not in any Slavic language. Your churches are Bulgarian churches with inscriptions in Bulgarian. Yes, the name of your country is not Bulgarian and that's no problem really, because ethnicity and nationality are not supposed to be the same thing. Therefore, we, Bulgarians, say that we are happy you are finally independent....
I mean, it is really your business what you do in your country. To me you will always remain my brothers, a part of my people and my people's history (and, note, not of my country as it is today)....
The USSA?
What with TIP, The Homeland Security, listening devices, profiles for suspected foreign agents, the mind boggling bureaucracy that grows out of everyone checking up on everyone else etc., the parallel with the old Soviet Union is unmistakable for anyone who has ever visited or lived there.
We now have at least one concentration camp we know of in Guantanamo, before long there may be more. Asking too many questions becomes unpatriotic, suspicious behaviour and no doubt before long punishable by law. Instead of wearing red scarves, we wear American flags on our lapels. I recall a Soviet schoolboy's picture in a newspaper, a hero when he denounced his parents for listening to Radio Free Europe. Now that we are encouraged to denounce our neighbours for anything suspicious, will Arab American children turn in their Moms and Dads for listening to Al Jazeera broadcasts? Perhaps what we are missing is Samizdat or would that be internet now? Oh America where are you? Where have you gone?
Well, in
the meantime, while we are waiting for it to come back,we are at least
Masters of the world. We can shuffle countries around, decide which ones
are democratic and which ones we should bomb, who can be elected president
here and there. So why don't we just make the Eastern Seaboard Israel
with the Capital in New York, give that dry unhospitable practically waterless
desert back to the Palestinians and all non entitied Arabs who were pushed
out of there because they weren't a "State", move the UN to
Jerusalem and make it a free city for everyone, including Christians,
who also have a vested interest in the place, but for some reason never
say it.
~ Jenny Thompson, Spain