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Conservative Wanderer:

Let me also add that my YPSL acquaintance, as well as Marx himself at a certain stage, did not think that capitalists were evil, only misguided and alienated.  If they could be shown (here Marx must have had Engels, whose father owned a factory, in mind) that they were exploiting their workers, they would cease.  Thus my acquaintance, although never meek and mild, was not as angry and resentful as so many other leftists.  His Marxism was largely a matter of intellectual conviction.

My acquaintance, like Hitch, considered himself a classical, "scientific" socialist.  I could debate with him as one rational man to another.  He never mentioned ideas that sounded similar to the neo-Marxists of the French deconstructionists*, the Gramsci-ites, or of the Frankfurt School**.   I suspect that he would have considered them to be lunatics. He was almost Adam-Smithian in his insistence on the self-interest of the working class.

I never heard him utter anything so paranoid as rantings of romanticist new Left.  There was no cultural "criticism," only the old-line economic theory of surplus value.

*He, like Hegel, insisted that man is rational and thus free.

**He thought that Middle-class American life was desirable; he just wanted it to be available to the factory workers.

The fellow always made a fuss about being a colonial.  No doubt he'll give you all the left cheek you could possibly tolerate, and then some.

Whom the gods would destroy. ... Uh, you may have heard it in Greek, Pseudo-cat.  Some lefties love it--or claim to love those who do.

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(Grr, once again, late to the party.)

Back in my misspent youth, when I was a libertarian, I nevertheless "hung out" with a number of Norman-Thomas social democrats (YPSL folk, for those who may know), even one iconic figure who used to haunt the fringes of UCB to the irritation of the far, far left, because like George Orwell, he was an anti-Stalinist.  He was a kind of Hitch before Hitch (but he wasn't a Trot); he supported the Viet Nam War and Nixon against McGovern; but he was a Union man through and through.

He and I shared an occasion to exchange papers.  I wrote a bit on Hayek's Constitution of Liberty.  He wrote on an introduction to Marx.  We had agreed to read each other's book, then write a few pages.  It was fun.

Soon he married, and he actually invited me to the wedding.  He gave a little speech, during which he said, without referring to my presence specifically, that "politics wasn't everything."  (I guess he was a good Hegelian after all.)

Point is, my acquaintance was a committed socialist, but he was not a fanatic. 

Obama is something else again.

Thanks.  I almost said something like, "Oh well, the message will get around.  I can ignore this," but no, a post on Ricochet's Member Feed may help to send that Alinsky-ite back to the wards of Chicago.

This may come as a surprise to some, but not all governmental secrets are cloaks for tyranny.  Some actually defend the citizenry. Imagine if even a Progressive like FDR could keep no secrets from the minions of Hitler or Tojo.

Self-serving vagrants like Assange and his own cabal lack both the wisdom and the integrity to discern the protective from the merely convenient.

He and they must not be allowed to escape the condign penalty of the law.

zum Elysium

Ah, doc, spare me from ever having to come under your care.   Expert, no doubt; delivered with a gentle bedside manner, no way!

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Whittle at the end seemed to be channeling Andrew Breitbart.  Perhaps he is by nature too soft-spoken for the full effect, but his indignation is genuine and focused on the proper target.

Why, even I remember that song.  The original version, of course.  I was really still a kid--not even an adolescent--when it first sounded on the airwaves, and I hadn't yet opened to other musics.

Wasn't there something about taking his case to the United Nations?  Such confidence, or was it naivete?  Definitely, China did not sit on the Security Council, and Kruschev was still slamming his shoes on the table.  His congressman replied with amazing honesty, neither did he ask for a campaign contribution.  I guess he didn't live in Illinois.

You are more charitable than I, but my bad humor has already earned me a rebuke.

I could follow one of two paths or alternate between them:

I could post compositions that, without naming names, bolster my original contention and defend my preference for high culture; or I could post something that offers the balm of reconciliation.

Where, oh where, will the spirits lead me?

Hmm, that is difficult.  It is almost certain that 30 years from now I shall have died, so I'll not be able to check back with all you youngsters who will still be commenting on Ricochet in the time to come (smiles). 

Neither Romney nor Obama will ever achieve Thatcher-like stature.  Obama will not have achieved world-historical status; even if he should be re-elected, he'll remain a kind of Nixon of the Left, always embroiled in resistance.  Romney's sole task and his sole competence is to mitigate somewhat the harm that Obama has caused.  He will be neither inclined nor permitted to re-establish the degree of limited governance that the country has not seen since Calvin Coolidge.  If he should endeavor to make a beginning in that direction, that will be as much as any Constitutional conservative can expect.

Neither will deal well with a nuclear Iran.  Obama will be a disaster; Romney not really much better, IMHO.  I suspect that at least the latter will not attempt to interfere with the job that Israel will have to do, but that still renders him a snail,  not the Weltgeist on horseback.

Beach reading, the catalogue of ships?  Akhilleos sulking in his tent?

Semi-teasing.  Homer is magnificent--but maybe not at the beach, before the gates of Troy.

(Now if I could only rewrite this post in dactylic hexameters. ... No, too onerous for a Saturday.)

... Now, Iphigenia in Aulis, that's another matter altogether.

Gaudeamus et litteratis laudemus.  Salve, speculator. Tu es, enimvero, vir bonus. Sed nunc patria cara vulnera est. Adiuva nos, si tibi placet.

Now, that's what I like, a post from a citizen of one of few European countries with a rational government.  You are right, too many of our Republicans have cowered too timidly.  But those days must be dismissed lest we allow our great republic to slip away into supine socialism.  That wouldn't help you sensible folk in Europe at all.