The New Left

[30]JUSPAO, the American information office in Saigon, has mountains of Viet Cong horror photos, but these are often so obscene that they are just not fit for publication. American troops seeing such nauseating scenes might often lose their balane and not keep the rules of war. But surely they would not disembowel people, make them watch how pigs eat their entrails, bury them alive (as it happened to the Benedictine Father David Urbain) or only half-bury them so they were eaten alive by ants (as it happened to Father Jean de Compeigne). The Tet offensive and its gory details should have been an eye-opener to the most fanatical peacenik, denying that premature American withdrawal would involve the martyrdom of millions.

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I have always maintained that the worst mistake we made was not putting these photos on national TV and elsewhere. The consequence would have been destruction of the so-called peace movement. In not releasing this information the viciousness and atrocities of the communists became a non event. Even today in my written analysis people doubt it when I say such things happened.

bump to read later

btt

My brain hurts BUMP!

I have to go to work bump.

I don't think reading an FR article will fly as an excuse.

Perhaps this is why Aurther Miller was called before the Senate Committee on Un-American Activities. Being a Marxist is not a crime, but it is the enemy of individual freedom and an esoteric philosophy or religion. A well-placed Marxist will not generally make an open, identifying proclamation, they are of an occult nature.

Whether Miller was a Marxist or not, is a whole different matter. It is the subject of some speculation(s). It would explain some of the terminology, especially his choice of a title for Tragedy and the Common Man. Marxism has it’s own dogma as religions do.

The ‘genealogy of morals’ and the ‘birth of tragedy’ (borrowing from Nietzsche’s titles) is also alluded to by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences:

An ancient tradition passed out of Egypt into Greece, that some god, who was an enemy to the repose of mankind, was the inventor of the sciences. What must the Egyptians, among whom the sciences first arose, have thought of them? And they beheld, near at hand, the sources from which they sprang. In fact, whether we turn to the annals of the world, or eke out with philosophical investigations the uncertain chronicles of history, we shall not find for human knowledge an origin answering to the idea we are pleased to entertain of it at present. Astronomy was born of superstition, eloquence of ambition, hatred, falsehood, and flattery; geometry of avarice; physics of an idle curiosity; all, even moral philosophy, of human pride. Thus the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices; we should be less doubtful of their advantages, if they had sprung from our virtues. (Rousseau, p 15)

The philosophies of Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes are not generally considered analogous. Rousseau is actually very hostile to Hobbes, calling him ‘pernicious’ in A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences:

…Paganism, though given over to all the extravagances of human reason, has left nothing to compare with the shameful monuments which have been prepared by the art of printing,* during the reign of the gospel. The impious writings of Leucippus and Diagoras perished with their authors. The world, in their days, was ignorant of the art of immortalizing the errors and extravagances of the human mind. But thanks to the art of printing and the use we make of it, the pernicious reflections of Hobbes and Spinoza will last forever. Go, famous writings, of which the ignorance and rusticity of our forefathers would have been incapable. Go to our descendants, along with those still more pernicious works which reek of the corrupted manners the present age! Let them together convey to posterity a faithful history of the progress and advantages of our arts and sciences. If they are read, they will not leave a doubt about the question we are now discussing, and unless mankind should then be still more foolish than we, they will lift up their hands to Heaven and exclaim in bitterness of heart: ‘Almighty God! Thou who holdest in Thy hand the minds of men, deliver us from the fatal arts and sciences of our forefathers; give us back the ignorance, innocence, and poverty, which alone can make us happy and are precious in Thy sight.’ (Rousseau, p 26-27)
*If we consider the frightful disorder which printing has already caused in Europe, and judge of the future by the progress of its evils from day to day, it is easy to foresee that sovereigns will hereafter take as much pains to banish this dreadful art from their dominions, as they ever took to encourage it. The Sultan Achmet, yielding to the opportunities of certain pretenders to taste, consented to have a press erected at Constantinople; but it was hardly set to work before they were obliged to destroy it, and throw the plant into a well.
It is related that the Caliph Omar, being asked what should be done with the Library at Alexandria, answered in these words: ‘If the books in the library contain anything contrary to the Alcoran, they are evil and ought to be burnt; if they contain only what the Alcoran teaches, they are superflous.’ This reasoning has been cited by our men of letters as the height of absurdity; but if Gregory the Great had been in place of Omar and the Gospel in the place of the Alcoran, the library would still have been burnt, and it would have been perhaps the finest action of his life.
Rousseau, Jean-Jaques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Trans. G.D.H. Cole, Rev. J.H. Brumfitt and John C. Hall. London: Guernsey Press, 1973.

Hobbes, and later John Locke, are philosophers who established philosophical ideals that are the basis for Modern Western Civilization. Rousseau, it is argued, establishes a philosophical basis for Marxism - - something Miller appears to emulate with Death of a Salesman. The rhetoric of Marxists in politics often use the idea of a social contract and the term itself to promote the quasi-religious ideals they worship. Marxists, in a sense, worship the ideals of a dead Karl Marx like some Christians worship the image of a dead Jesus. The political Left often holds to the view of Rousseau, cited above. They eschew the advancement of science and of the arts. It is no wonder that in their pursuit to dominate academia, that the decline of education in the West has been a victim of the political Left. Is it any wonder that the modern Left opposes U.S. military action in the war against terrorism, hates the Jews and Israel, as well as supports the Palestinians and terrorism?

Great stuff. If you havent seen it already, see this article: http://www.FreeRepublic.com/focus/news/669634/posts

Ping-a-ping, ping!

For years and years, Herr Erik was known affectionately as "the world's greatest expert." It didn't matter what subject. He knew more about it than you did :-)

An absolutely stinging criticism of anarchism. This guy is good.

I just noticed the keyword of Horowitz. I think that the author here is talking more about Noam Chomskey and company, not Horowitz (unless you mean the old Horowitz, but even then he was more "Old Left" than "New Left" back then).

The third founder of the New Left, Professor Max Horkheimer, a particularly close friend of Theodor Adorno, has since been moving in another direction. In an interview [14] he declared that man can properly be understood only by taking his transcendent character into account, and that we have to return to theology, a declaration which caused shrieks of indignation from pious agnostics and atheists.

Old Horkheimer, one of the very few leftists who began to catch a glimmer of the truth, understood that it is only through the transcendent that man is even able to perceive the material. The Left, whether "Old" or "New" will not accept his insight, however, because to admit not only the existence of the transcendent but it's paramount importance to human life requires them to tacitly admit the possibility of God. And with God, there can be no "Left".

I don't think it was a "war" we were slated to win.

The atrocities to which our men were exposed (and in which some ended up engaging) were just another prong in the psychological destruction from within to which our men were subjected ... ... the second front was waged at home, of course, and both fronts in the psychological assault relied heavily on drugs -- the Kids Back Home in a la-la land of sensuality and Freedom from Restraint, the men overseas offered as much cheap, plentiful and pure heroin and hard drugs as they could stand to kill the Reality without killing themselves, as many did in the process.

Drugs, IMHO, being a key to the whole operation whose duplicitious nature was only underscored by the critical appeasement of China during the conflict in this essential area: Kissinger's stopping the overflights of Burmese poppy fields and the CIA's cranking the Golden Triangle out of the Yunnan Province.

In fact, given the invoking of the Third in the Noun Series -- the War on Drugs -- in the twilight of the Viet Nam War, I'm confident that it was the engagement re: drugs, not the fight against communism that governed the prosecution of the "war" in Viet Nam.

If we'd been serious about fighting communism, we'd have blown Cuba off the map instead of turning a blind eye to the Tri-Continental Conference in Havanan in '66, the construction of terrorist training camps on the island which began drawing far leftists from across Europe and the Middle East and the use of Cuba as a launchpad for Soviet and Chicom sponsored revolution throughout Latin America.

We have no problems displaying atrocities -- dead Rangers dragged through the dirts in Somalia, innocents leaping to their deaths last September 11th -- it's just that timing and the subject have to be Just Right.

(We're particularly keen on "respecting the dead" where the unborn are concerned ... feel free to use 9/11 jumpers as punctuation for your flame posts, however. Can't have enough of those images in folks' faces these days ... even if America was carefully spared the more graphic images to which the Europeans -- a bit jaded after three decades of Soviet-sponsored terror -- were treated.)

lol ... it's worth it where this guy's concerned.

I'll check it out, thanks.

(May disagree with you in part, however, re: your first post ... =)

Oh T'wit ... I'm so happy to see you.

I'd heard the name (and a few favorite stories) for years. Some of the Societe among which I hang out were part of this underground group who'd invite him each year to come stay for a week. (Molnar's invited now and -- after eight long years -- I finally got an invitation this year! =)

Cicero's Son put me over the edge ... I've been vacuuming up his stuff at Abebooks ever since ... carefully timing my ration of chapters and notes so that I don't run out before the next one arrives!

He is a wonderful read. Just when you think he must never have slept to have read so voraciously and studied so thoroughly, it dawns on you that he was probably speaking in one of the dozen or more languages he knew as he relates this anecdote re: some head of state or that story he got from some bum in a baitshop in some remote corner of the world or another. Fascinating guy.

Here's another except from "LEFTISM". As a bonus, Dales inserted a copy of his Christianity: The Foundation and Conservator of Freedom.

Trust all is well with you, guy. I keep you (and all the Bloodhounds) in my thoughts.

As a result the American imported New Left could quickly strike roots, and this all the more so as the three most important New Left ideologues had lived as German refugees in America: Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse who alone stayed on in the New World, whereas Adorno and Horkheimer returned to their native country.

I thought I would enhance this discussion by bringing in some context about each of these men.

Theodor W. Adorno - (taedôr ve´zengroond ädôr´no) , 1903-69, German philosopher, born as Theodor Adorno Wiesengrund. Forced into exile by the Nazis (1933), he spent 16 years in England and the United States before returning to Germany to take up a chair in philosophy at Frankfurt. A leading member of the Frankfurt School , Adorno launched critiques of the Enlightenment conception of reason (see Dialectic of Enlightenment, written with Max Horkheimer, 1947, tr. 1972), of Hegelian idealism (see Negative Dialectics 1966, tr. 1973), and of existentialism (see The Jargon of Authenticity 1964, tr. 1973). He also led an influential attack on the “culture industry” prevalent in contemporary capitalist society. Influenced by Schoenberg, Adorno wrote extensively on music theory and developed an account of modernism in art. Adorno's works include Minima Moralia (1951, tr. 1974), Philosophy of Modern Music (1958, tr. 1985), and Aesthetic Theory (1970, tr. 1984).
Max Horkheimer - 1895-1973, German philosopher and sociologist. As director (1930-58) of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, he played an important role in the development of critical theory and Western Marxism. In Eclipse of Reason (1947) and Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947, written with Theodor Adorno ), he developed a critique of scientific positivism, whose “instrumental rationality” had become a form of domination in both capitalist and socialist countries. Against an older, deterministic Marxism, he argued that culture and consciousness are partly independent of economics, and his ideas about liberation and consumer society continue to influence contemporary empirical sociologists.
Herbert Marcuse - U.S. political philosopher, b. Berlin. He was educated at the Univ. of Freiburg and with Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer founded the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research. A special target of the Nazis because of his Jewish origins and Marxist politics, he emigrated (1934) to the United States and became a naturalized citizen in 1940. Marcuse served with the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and later taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Brandeis before becoming (1965) professor of philosophy at the Univ. of California at San Diego. He is best known for his attempt to synthesize Marxian and Freudian theories into a comprehensive critique of modern industrial society. In One Dimensional Man (1964), his most popular book, he argued for a sexual basis to the social and political repression in contemporary America; the book made him a hero of New Left radicals and provided a rationale for the student revolts of the 1960s in the United States and Europe. His other works include Reason and Revolution (1941), Eros and Civilization (1955), An Essay on Liberation (1969), and Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972).

Also of interest is Horowitz' repudiation of the New Left, Destructive Generation.

My affairs have taken some strange flips, Askel, but all for the good... and I haven't really been "away." Simply unable to join the discussions for the time being.

I knew Herr Erik, as you probably guessed. Didn't see him that much -- he'd come over once a year from Lans, Tyrol to deliver enough lectures to keep body and soul together. Several {cough} years ago, at a private golf party, he carried my toddler son around the course on his shoulders; said son is now 40.

More recently, to my complete surprise, I bumped into him in the waiting room of a friendly foundation in Michigan. He spoke cheerfully of his great age and being past the time to die... of having out-of-body experiences in his sleep, as if his soul were getting ready to make its departure. (Malcolm Muggeridge reported the exact same phenomenon in his last year or two.) Erik did indeed pass on soon after and one supposes he's entertaining the Lord with his prodigious supply of anecdotes and wisdom.

Bump to read later.

"Shortsighted" and "new left" -- repetitious and redundant:

"The whole student movement from Tierra del Fuego to Tokyo and Berlin is characterized by the shortsightedness and the cruelty of youth."