History and Demogogues

JohnT said:

wants to punish the rich to give welfare to the rest of us.

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Simply put: this is what we call socialism and history has shown that socialism leads to, of course, huge government, no freedoms, and a horrible economy.

...so long as you ignore all those democratic, prosperous, socialist
countries in Europe.

And also consider that America's left wing would actually be right wing in most other nations.

+ a Godwin in the OP is pretty impressive too.

Ryal Kane said:

...so long as you ignore all those democratic, prosperous, socialist
countries in Europe.

And also consider that America's left wing would actually be right wing in most other nations.

+ a Godwin in the OP is pretty impressive too.

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I have to agree, it's one thing to Godwin someone elses thread a couple of pages in but to do it in the OP? That IS impressive!
tulc(takes his hat off to show respect)

JohnT said:

The most recent revelation from Senator Obama’s campaign shows that he is a demagogue in the vein those in Europe in the 1930s..Obama wants to punish the rich to give welfare to the rest of us. Politico explains part of his energy policy this way “The first part of Obama’s plan is an emergency energy rebate ($500 to individual workers, $1,000 to families) as soon as this fall.”

What will that really solve? We know the price of gasoline is high, but how will that make gasoline cheaper? Obama really is not after cheaper gas prices, and he stated that before.

Speaker Pilosi stated that last week, She refused to bring to the floor a bill that 75% of Americans approve of, expanding drilling to increase supplies. Her reason was repeated like a mantra, “I’m trying to save the planet.”

Meanwhile, Obama is calling the huge profits of companies like Exxon-Mobile “obscene”, reminiscent of the Carter White House making a tax (surcharge) on profits they deem excessive. By doing that, Obama demonizes major corporations. This is a capitalist country and anyone who tries to redistribute wealth in the manner he proposes, has the sulfurous smell of socialism on it.

Granted, the oil prices are high, but it is not due to egregious greed by companies. Recent events prove that the speculators increased their margins, and the refining capacity in the US has not increased in over 30 years. That is a recipe for shortages and high costs.

If there was a problem with the oil companies, it would have been discovered. Some of us can remember the 1972 Oil Crisis when we had long lines, and prices shot up to a record 80 cents per gallon. In the intervening 40 years with many investigations, no one has said that big oil was responsible for the price of gas.

Yet Senator Obama wants to make the oil companies the bogey men. He vilifies them. Our gas problems are due to them, he says, so we will punish them financially.

His plan is the same sort of demagoguery that Hitler used in 1939. Hitller blamed the hated Jews for every problem that Germany had. The senator’s plan is ludicrous, and it could generate another Kristallnacht, this time at our local gas stations.

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Does anybody else see irony in this piece of demagoguery?

Perhaps a post that pointed directly to things Obama said, and didn't revolve around Kristallnacht, Hitler, socialism, the demise of capitalism, and the like might seem less like demagoguery.

Is Obama doing the kind of fearmongering and hatemongering that Hitler did? I don't think so. But you are.

Jonathan

Bootstrap said:

Does anybody else see irony in this piece of demagoguery?

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Here's a nice exercise for the reader. Use the checklist from the Wikipedia article on Demagogy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogy

How many items from that checklist can you identify in the OP?

Jonathan

Bootstrap said:

Is Obama doing the kind of fearmongering and hatemongering that Hitler did? I don't think so. But you are.

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Don't feed the trolls.

JohnT said:

The most recent revelation from Senator Obama’s campaign shows that he is a demagogue in the vein those in Europe in the 1930s..Obama wants to punish the rich to give welfare to the rest of us. Politico explains part of his energy policy this way “The first part of Obama’s plan is an emergency energy rebate ($500 to individual workers, $1,000 to families) as soon as this fall.”

What will that really solve? We know the price of gasoline is high, but how will that make gasoline cheaper? Obama really is not after cheaper gas prices, and he stated that before.

Speaker Pilosi stated that last week, She refused to bring to the floor a bill that 75% of Americans approve of, expanding drilling to increase supplies. Her reason was repeated like a mantra, “I’m trying to save the planet.”

Meanwhile, Obama is calling the huge profits of companies like Exxon-Mobile “obscene”, reminiscent of the Carter White House making a tax (surcharge) on profits they deem excessive. By doing that, Obama demonizes major corporations. This is a capitalist country and anyone who tries to redistribute wealth in the manner he proposes, has the sulfurous smell of socialism on it.

Granted, the oil prices are high, but it is not due to egregious greed by companies. Recent events prove that the speculators increased their margins, and the refining capacity in the US has not increased in over 30 years. That is a recipe for shortages and high costs.

If there was a problem with the oil companies, it would have been discovered. Some of us can remember the 1972 Oil Crisis when we had long lines, and prices shot up to a record 80 cents per gallon. In the intervening 40 years with many investigations, no one has said that big oil was responsible for the price of gas.

Yet Senator Obama wants to make the oil companies the bogey men. He vilifies them. Our gas problems are due to them, he says, so we will punish them financially.

His plan is the same sort of demagoguery that Hitler used in 1939. Hitller blamed the hated Jews for every problem that Germany had. The senator’s plan is ludicrous, and it could generate another Kristallnacht, this time at our local gas stations.

Click to expand...

Bootstrap said:

Here's a nice exercise for the reader. Use the checklist from the Wikipedia article on Demagogy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogy

How many items from that checklist can you identify in the OP?

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Ok there's the OP and here's the list:

Apples and oranges — mixing of incomparable quantities. For example, "our government has increased social spending by 5 billion dollars, while the previous government increased it only by 0.4 percent." The latter sounds like less, but one cannot be sure without an absolute value.
Half-truth — making statements that are true only in a strict and relatively meaningless sense. For example, "the opposition have accused us of cutting foreign aid, but actually our government has increased foreign aid by 500 million dollars," not mentioning that (adjusted for inflation) the allocated funds have in fact gone down.
False authority — relying on the general authority of a person who is not proficient in the discussed topic. For example, "the professor read my book, and liked it very much," omitting the fact that it was a professor of chemistry who read a book on anthropology.
False dilemma — assuming that there are only two possible opinions on a given topic. For example, "You're either with us or against us...," ignoring the possibility of a neutral position or divergence.
Demonization — identifying others as a mortal threat. Often this involves scapegoating — blaming others for one's own problems. This is often advanced by using vague terms to identify the opposition group and then stereotyping that group. This allows the demagogue to exaggerate this group's influence and ascribe any trait to them by identifying that trait in any individual in the group. This method can be aided by constructing a false dilemma that portrays opposition groups as having a value system that is the polar opposite of one's own, as opposed to simply having different priorities. This method was incorporated by the Nazi regime to gain the general support of the public when it began to initiate its anti-Semitic policies.
Straw man — mischaracterizing the opposing position and then arguing against the mischaracterization.
Loaded question — posing a question with an implied position that the opponent does not have, e.g. "When did you stop taking bribes?"
Unrelated facts — bringing unrelated facts that sound in favor of the speaker's agenda. For example, marking a vegetable or cereal product as "cholesterol free". Since cholesterol is only found in animal products, such labeling does not actually distinguish this product from similar competitors.
Emotional appeal or personal attack — attempting to bring a discussion to an emotional level. For example, "Everyone is against me!", "Can't I be right just once?", "You're stupid!", or just the classic retort "Shut up!"

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tulc(thinks this should be interesting)

JohnT said:

Calling into remembrance a similar plan is review in history, but most certainly NOT a personal attack, and since he vilifies oil companies in the same way that Hitler vilified the "evil" Jews, that is an accurate comparison of the type of rhetoric that he uses.

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Could you please give a few verbatim quotes from both sources that illustrate the parallelism? Because I've heard speeches by both Hitler (in German) and Obama, and I just don't see the parallels. I *have* heard Obama say that Big Oil has had a lot of power in the Bush Administration, and that letting them guide our policy to that extent has stood in the way of energy independence. When just one company, Exxon Mobil, earned 40 Billion in pure profit last year, I don't think Big Oil needs any special favors from our government, they should be able to compete using normal free market mechanisms. (For what it's worth, I'm not in favor of taxing windfall profits, but I also see no need to subsidize oil exploration or give away government owned oil for free to companies that have plenty of resources of their own.)

And when you bring in Kristallnacht, are you really afraid Obama's administration would bring violent riots where we cast oil executives out of their homes and haul them off to concentration camps? I find your post offensive precisely because I *lived* in Berlin, where we observed Kristallnacht every year, I've gone to concentration camps, I've heard the rhetoric of Hitler, and I used to watch Erich Honecker on the newscasts many evenings talking about the threat of the West that was always on the verge of invading East Germany. I know what hatemongering and fearmongering sound like, and I haven't been hearing it from the Obama camp.

Yeah, Obama's a good speaker, but he's hardly a demagogue. (In fact, he's sometimes accused of being cooly cerebral, I've never heard him called the kind of emotional rabble rouser that Hitler was. And the man has an appreciation for our Constitution - did you notice this in his Rick Warren interview?

OBAMA: Right, exactly. I’m getting the cues. I’m getting the cues. One of the most important jobs of, I believe the Supreme Court is to guard against the encroachment of the executive branch on the other, the power of the other branches. WARREN: OK.
OBAMA: And I think that he has been a little bit too willing and eager to give an administration, whether it’s mine or George Bush’s, more power than I think the Constitution originally intended.

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This stuff matters *precisely* because the balance of powers in our Constitution is one of the greatest protections we have against tyranny. Some of us think the best way to protect democracy and freedom is to protect democracy and freedom. As envisioned in our Constitution.


Obama's message is consistently that we should learn to work together, in both parties, to address problems like energy. He is not painting any race, religion, or political party as the enemy. He is not suggesting that we give up any of our first amendment, fourth amendment, fifth amendment, or sixth amendment rights, or circumvent the Geneva Convention. I really wish he hadn't caved on judicial oversight of wiretapping, but in general he's been on the side of preserving the freedoms we should care most about in order to guard against undue expansion of executive power.

So one of the reasons I like Obama is precisely that he is not a demagogue, that he has largely resisted the hatemongering and fearmongering that is so prevalent in this election, that he understands and respects the basis for democracy and freedom in the American Constitution.

Jonathan

JohnT said:

His plan is the same sort of demagoguery that Hitler used in 1939. Hitller blamed the hated Jews for every problem that Germany had. The senator’s plan is ludicrous, and it could generate another Kristallnacht, this time at our local gas stations.

Click to expand...

Godwined in the OP.

Will they ever learn...



Anyway, since the thread is Godwined, it is about nothing, so we must choose an actual topic.

I suggest hummingbirds.

I hear they will do anything for sugar water...

Some of us can remember the 1972 Oil Crisis when we had long lines, and prices shot up to a record 80 cents per gallon. In the intervening 40 years with many investigations, no one has said that big oil was responsible for the price of gas.

Click to expand...

Actually, it never was about big oil, it was the embargo OPEC put on us for supporting Israel. Quantity supplied v quantity demanded, et al.

BTW, my plate was "even", anyone out there with an "odd"?

The senator’s plan is ludicrous, . . .

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Does that mean Obama plagiarised ludicrous' idea?

(tulc, you should be proud 'o me)

JohnT said:

Could not find that in the dictionary, asn I was asking for a definition

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Godwin's Law"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups

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tulc(hope that helps)

ArnautDaniel said:

Godwined in the OP.

Will they ever learn...



Anyway, since the thread is Godwined, it is about nothing, so we must choose an actual topic.

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Howz about canned Spam? Share your favorite recipe/memory?

jeremy88888 said:

Simply put: this is what we call socialism and history has shown that socialism leads to, of course, huge government, no freedoms, and a horrible economy.

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But doesn't history also show that the 'small govt' 'large govt' arguement does not fit in our small vs. large today?

Facist govts in the 30s wanted power for the few. A true American arguement today means more power for the many. So how does your arguement compare?