Not a bad, short column here about the utterly ridiculous Tucker Carlson saying that he's glad John Bolton has gone, because he was a man of the Left:
"It is great news for America," as Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Tuesday
evening, "especially for the large number of young people who would
have been killed in pointless wars if Bolton had stayed on the job."
Bolton was an inveterate hawk, perpetually undermining the president's
better instincts on pursuing diplomacy and extricating America from her
many misadventures in the Middle East. And anyway, as Carlson continued,
Bolton "fundamentally was a man of the left," and — wait, what?
John Bolton, fundamentally a man of the left? Opposed to
abortion and gun control, pro-private sector remedies to recession,
unrelentingly aggressive on foreign policy John Bolton? Bomb Iran and invade North Korea John Bolton? Supporter of Barry Goldwater; member of the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump; Fox News commentator John Bolton? That John Bolton?
As she explains:
Some conservatives are putting in
the difficult but necessary work of constructive criticism of their own
movement. But Carlson and others like him have chosen the easier and
more damaging method of handling disagreement via a constant game of "no
true Scotsman." Instead of admitting fault, error, or even simple
differences of opinion within their own camp — and different policy
preferences unquestionably can develop from a set of ideological
underpinnings unified enough to fund a single movement — they relabel
anything objectionable as the property of their political enemies.
For this crowd, to have a bad position is to have a liberal position.
If you're not with us, you're against us. To err is to be a Democrat.
For Carlson, if Bolton is a disaster on foreign policy, that proves
Bolton is a left-winger.
Its all a bit arbitrary isn't it? For decades the left had the advantage of being able to associate Hitler with anyone who wanted small government. The small government people in the US were isolationist, and that was only really changed with the CIA intervening and the promotion of people like William F Buckley Junior. William Buckley's job was to marginalise the old small government isolationist right and to come down hard on the identification of likely conspiracies.
ReplyDeleteHitler and Stalin were held to be on opposite ends of the spectrum. But anything more than a superficial look at these guys showed them to be pretty much ideological blood brothers. So yes it is a "No True Scotsman" argument but its just picking up tools that the opposition has already been using.
I think that this new type of capitalism with funny money, gigantic winner takes all corporations, and ubiquitous debt is another form of Hitlerism or Stalinism. But I won't call it left-wing because that would be unnecessarily incendiary. Hitler was deep cover but he hated classical liberalism and at least pretended to hate Jews. When he took over the party it was a much less vicious party. His people used the party as a vehicle for their nastiness and Hitler was well-funded by oligarchs of all stripes to become the front man. Deep cover I would say.