Bush Appoints Four More Fascists to Cabinet

greenspun.com : LUSENET : Unk's Wild Wild West : One Thread

Cabinet Lackeys

Friday December 29 12:18 PM ET, Yahoo

A Look at New Nominees to Bush Cabinet

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect George W. Bush (news - web sites) on Friday named four more nominees to his Cabinet, filling the posts of secretaries of the interior, veterans affairs, education and health and human services. The nominees are:

Gale Norton, Interior Secretary Nominee

Gale Norton served two terms as Colorado's attorney general from 1991-1999, the first woman in the state's history to hold the office. A pro-choice Republican, she leans on the conservative side of environmental and economic issues. She began her private legal career as a staffer at the Denver-based Mountain States Legal Foundation where she spent four years before being elected as Colorado's attorney general. Former President Bush appointed her to the Western Water Policy Commission and she also served as one of 28 prominent Republicans co-chairing the National Policy Forum. Norton represented Colorado in the nationwide tobacco litigation and was a strong advocate of Colorado's ``self-audit'' law, which allows companies to conduct voluntary audits to determine whether they are complying with environmental requirements.

Rodney Paige, Secretary Of Education Nominee

Rodney Paige, the second black member of Bush's Cabinet after Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell (news - web sites), has been Houston Independent School District superintendent since 1994. He visited six state delegations prior to the Republican Convention to tout Bush's education record. While in Houston, Paige implemented an accountability system for schools that closely mirrors Bush's philosophy, increased the district's police force and improved dropout rates. Paige, who holds a doctorate in education, oversees a $1.3 billion budget.

Anthony Principi, Veterans Affairs Secretary Nominee

A combat-decorated Vietnam War veteran, Anthony Principi served as deputy secretary of veterans affairs in former President Bush's administration. He also served as chairman of the Commission of Service members and Veterans Transition Assistance, which was established by Congress in 1996. In his role as chairman, Principi has been responsible for reviewing benefits and services to veterans and service members. He is also president and chairman of the board of The Federal Network, a wireless telecommunications company with headquarters in San Diego, California. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1967 and in Vietnam was assigned as unit commander of a River Patrol Force in the Mekong Delta. He was awarded the Bronze Star with Combat ``V'' for valor, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, the Navy Combat Action medal and several other decorations.

Tommy Thompson, Health And Human Services Nominee

Gov. Tommy Thompson made a name for himself in Wisconsin as a pragmatic conservative who promoted welfare-to-work programs and won four terms but never quite made the transition to the national stage -- until now. The Bush administration is hoping Thompson's skill in moving welfare recipients back into the mainstream can be extended to difficult issues surrounding the reform of the Social Security retirement program and federal medical assistance programs. Thompson, 59, had hoped for a leading role in transportation, a passion he has pursued as Amtrak chairman, but instead was named to a post that includes the challenging issue of abortion. Back in Wisconsin, welfare reforms were given names such as Workfare, Learnfare and Bridefare. One demanded recipients work, another tied benefits to a child's school attendance and the third preserved benefits to young parents who agreed to get married.

-- (LeonTrotsky@Socialist.Rtealism), December 29, 2000

Answers

These running-dogs of capitalism will rubber-stamp Shrubya's reactionary policies.

Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your Cheneys!

-- (LeonTrotsky@Socialist.Realism), December 29, 2000.


Anthony Principi, Veterans Affairs Secretary Nominee

A combat-decorated Vietnam War veteran, Anthony Principi served as deputy secretary of veterans affairs in former President Bush's administration. He also served as chairman of the Commission of Service members and Veterans Transition Assistance, which was established by Congress in 1996. In his role as chairman, Principi has been responsible for reviewing benefits and services to veterans and service members. He is also president and chairman of the board of The Federal Network, a wireless telecommunications company with headquarters in San Diego, California. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1967 and in Vietnam was assigned as unit commander of a River Patrol Force in the Mekong Delta. He was awarded the Bronze Star with Combat ``V'' for valor, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, the Navy Combat Action medal and several other decorations.

Fascist huh?

You are truly a worthless fuck coward.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), December 29, 2000.


Fascist huh?

You are truly a worthless fuck coward.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com),

uh oh, pissed off the massa you did you did!!!!

Comeon unc, dont hold 'back' tell us how you really feel.

hee hee.

-- sumer (shh@aol.con), December 29, 2000.


-- (LeonTrotsky@Socialist.Rtealism), December 29, 2000

Gee...not another gutless liberal hiding behind a pseudo handle again. What a surprize!

There does seem to be a common element with these type of posts. When liberals take a stand (so to speak) on an issue....by and large they turn into spineless jellyfish. Ya know, kinda like that neighbor that smiles to your face but is the first to stick a knife in your back when you aren't around.

Oh yea, it seems when they do it, they do it anonymously so you never know for sure who is was that did it.

Gutless...spineless...lower than whale shit jellyfish!

-- Ain't Gonna Happen (Not Here Not@ever.com), December 29, 2000.


Unk, you said:

"You are truly a worthless fuck coward."

ROTFLMAO

rollin' on the floor...

The Dog

-- The Dog (dogdesert@hotmail.com), December 29, 2000.



Oh, this is great. Thanks for the response folks.

-- (LeoTrotsky@Commie.cell), December 29, 2000.

I find it truly ironic that most liberals attempt to paint conservatives as socialistic when in fact LIBERALS hold fast to the very socialistic 'values' conservatives hate!

It is the liberals who act like NAZI's!

The definition of 'Nazi' IS National Socialist!

A DUH!!!

-- Ain't Gonna Happen (Not Here Not@ever.com), December 29, 2000.


oops!

I find it truly ironic that most liberals attempt to paint conservatives as socialistic when in fact LIBERALS hold fast to the very socialistic 'values' conservatives hate!

It is the liberals who act like NAZI's!

The definition of 'Nazi' IS National Socialist!

A DUH!!!

-- Ain't Gonna Happen (Not Here Not@ever.com), December 29, 2000.


damn

-- Ain't Gonna Happen (Not Here Not@ever.com), December 29, 2000.

Uncle, Uncle!

-- Ain't Gonna Happen (Not Here Not@ever.com), December 29, 2000.


I will say it again. Doesn't Dubya have his OWN friends?

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), December 29, 2000.

"Ain't",

The obvious question--aren't you "hiding behind a pseudo handle"? Oh I see, because you have posted so often, you think that "ain't" qualifies as a real indentifier.

The canard of National Socialism (German acronym NAZI) as being true Socialism is an old one. The fact is that Nazi-ism was never socialism. It was state-capitalism or state-syndicalism or just plain totalitarianism but it was not socialism.

C'mon, you can do better than that. Humor me, fascist oinker.

-- (LeonTrotsky@IcePick.Bazaar), December 29, 2000.


I don't follow you FS. Do you think W should be bringing in an Austin mafia or a Skull n Bones mafia or what? He is selecting a cabinet of highly qualified, experienced Republicans that are more diverse than Clinton's cabinet and, with the exception of Ashcroft, are not ideological Conservatives. He will even name a Democrat before he is done, unless he can't find a qualified one.

Leon, what rock were you under?

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), December 29, 2000.


Lars:

Of course I am being somewhat facetious, but for a man his age, and for someone who has been in politics awhile, I just thought he would have more of his own folks and not his daddy's or Gerald Ford's folks. It strikes me as curious that he doesn't have many of his own contacts-the "spoils" as you might call it, have gone to those who were loyal to daddy. I have not questioned qualifications per se-that is an entirely different subject-But you do not find it curious that, outside of the judge from texas and the board of ed guy ffrom houston, dubya has selected folks that already worked for daddy?

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), December 29, 2000.


Nothing much.

-- -- (noone@nowhere.xxx), December 29, 2000.


FS--

He probably has no world-class cronies of his own and considering the lack of election mandate he can hardly bring in some buddies that no one has heard of. They would be crucified in Advise and Consent. I expect that his personal staff will include some Austin types like Karen Hughes.

It will be fun to see if Katherine Harris is on board. (Gimme some hot stuff, oh baby, gimme some hot stuff)

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), December 30, 2000.


I have come to the conclusion that no matter who gets appointed...the whiners will still bitch and moan for lack of anything better to do.

-- cin (cin@cin.cin), December 30, 2000.

Leon,

Don't waste your time replying to "Ain't", he has already made it painfully obvious that he is the biggest idiot on this forum.

-- (Ain't is @ blowhard. jerkoff), December 30, 2000.


**********man proposes---GOD disposes [proverbs]************* a few get it-------prophecy is being fullfilled..........

yup it,s countdown-time!!!

maranatha---come LORD JESUS-----and set the world free!!!

-- al-d. (dogs@zianet.com), December 30, 2000.


Cin-

Am I a whiner? Or just someone who has serious doubts about Dubya's victory and his ability to lead this nation? To pick the right people? Far be it from me that I should sit on my hands if I disagree with something that is going down in my country. Because I might disagree with you does not make me a whiner.

Because I will fight what I believe dubya does wrongly with every inch of my fiber, does not make me a whiner. I am sure you were not referring to me, right?

-- FutureShock (gray@matter.think), December 30, 2000.


The real whiners are the blathering idiots who have been bashing Clinton/Gore for the last 8 years. Like the saying goes... "be careful what you ask for, you might just get it". Now that they've got what they wanted their whining will soon turn to deep regret.

-- (Dubya@major.disaster), December 30, 2000.

Cin, surely you weren't calling me a winner were you? Just becasue a dumb nazi who was never elected in the first place will become the first Ayatollah of American Conservative Theocracy does not make me a winner. Just because I will post mindless blathering articles acusing 'Dubby' of receiving campaign contributions from the North Koreans doesn't make me a winner. I will fight tooth and nail to make sure people do not like the dumb nazi, but this does not make me a winner. I am not a winner I am a liberal.

-- Mad Max (mad@the.world), December 30, 2000.

Leon,

Nazism and socialism have precisely the same roots -- they're based on the same basic, philosophic principles and I think I can prove it, although I'll need some time.

Hint for now: They're both forms of collectivism (vs. individualism), and can be traced back to the works of Plato, then to Kant, Hegel and others, up to the present day.

Are you open to finding out more?

-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), December 30, 2000.


I am, Eve. I've been reading Robt. Bellah's "Habits of the Heart," a look at the historical roots of Individualism in America. He and his co-writers seem to believe that Individualism as a philosophy is responsible for a lot of our current problems and that the answer is Communitarism, which seems like socialism to me, but I'm still reading. I don't agree with some of Bellah's analysis, but he has raised some compelling points, and the idea that socialism + Nazism have similar roots fits into this dialogue.

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), December 30, 2000.

FS I was not speaking to any one person in particular, but rather making a sweeping general observation. But by all means if the shoe fits....

jes kiddn wink =)

-- cin (cin@cin.cin), December 30, 2000.


Sure Eve. I know that Socialism is not for you but I don't accept that it has any connection to Nazi-ism. (I am talking about Utopian Socialism, much as you talk about Utopian Libertarianism).

Many Governments have called themself Socialist but I think they have all been corrupted from the ideal. Communism is only the worst example. Yes, you might argue that socialism is by nature corruptible. I will grant that possibility but do not accept that as a certainty.

-- (LeonTrotsky@Mexico.City), December 30, 2000.


Leon and kb8,

I won't have a lot of time to post for the next couple of days, but the following excerpt should help. This book, IMHO, is one of the most important non-fiction works ever written.

I'll try to post more as soon as I can, but in the meantime, feel free to ask for clarifications or elaborations.

from Chapter One of THE OMINOUS PARALLELS, by Leonard Peikoff (1982)

The Nazis were not a tribe of prehistoric savages. Their crimes were the official, legal acts and policies of modern Germany -- an educated, industrialized, CIVILIZED Western European nation, a nation renowned throughout the world for the luster of its intellectual and cultural achievements. By reason of its long line of famous artists and thinkers, Germany has been called "the land of poets and philosophers." But its education offered the country no protection against the Sergeant Molls in its ranks.

The German university students were among the earliest groups to back Hitler. The intellectuals were among his regime's most ardent supporters. Professors with distinguished academic credentials, eager to pronounce their benediction on the Fuhrer's cause, put their scholarship to work full time; they turned out a library of admiring volumes, adorned with obscure allusions and learned references.

The Nazis did not gain power against the country's wishes. In this respect there was no gulf between the intellectuals and the people. The Nazi party was elected to office by the freely cast ballots of millions of German voters, including men on every social, economic, and educational level. In the national election of July 1932, the Nazis obtained 37% of the vote and a plurality of seats in the Reichstag. On January 30, 1933, in full accordance with the country's legal and constitutional principles, Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Five weeks later, in the last (and semi-free) election of the pre-totalitarian period, the Nazis obtained 17 million votes, 44% of the total.

The voters were aware of the Nazi ideology. Nazi literature, including statements of the Nazi plans for the future, papered the country during the last years of the Weimar Republic. "Mein Kampf" alone sold more than 200,000 copies between 1925 and 1932. The essence of the political system which Hitler intended to establish in Germany was clear.

In 1933, when Hitler did establish the system he had promised, he did not find it necessary to forbid foreign travel. Until World War II, those Germans who wished to flee the country could do so. The overwhelming majority did not. They were satisfied to remain. The system which Hitler established -- the social reality which so many Germans were so eager to embrace or so willing to endure -- the politics which began in a theory and ended in Auschwitz -- was: the "total state". The term, from which the adjective "totalitarian" derives, was coined by Hitler's mentor, Mussolini.

The state must have absolute power over every man and over every sphere of human activity, the Nazis declared. "The authority of the Fuhrer is not limited by checks and controls, by special autonomous bodies or individual rights, but it is free and independent, all- inclusive and unlimited," said Ernst Huber, an official party spokesman, in 1933. "The concept of personal liberties of the individual as opposed to the authority of the state had to disappear; it is not to be reconciled with the principle of the nationalistic Reich," said Huber to a country which listened, and nodded. "There are no personal liberties of the individual which fall outside of the realm of the state and which must be respected by the state... The constitution of the nationalistic Reich is therefore not based upon a system of inborn and inalienable rights of the individual."

If the term "statism" designates concentration of power in the state at the expense of individual liberty, then Nazism in politics was a form of statism. In principle, it did not represent a new approach to government; it was a continuation of the political absolutism -- the absolute monarchies, the oligarchies, the theocracies, the random tyrannies -- which has characterized most of human history.

In degree, however, the total state does differ from its predecessors: it represents statism pressed to its limits, in theory and in practice, devouring the last remnants of the individual. Although previous dictators (and many today; e.g., in Latin America) often preached the unlimited power of the state, they were on the whole unable to enforce such power. As a rule, citizens of such countries had a kind of partial "freedom", not a freedom-on- principle, but at least a freedom-by-default.

Even the latter was effectively absent in Nazi Germany. The efficiency of the government in dominating its subjects, the all- encompassing character of its coercion, the complete mass regimentation on a scale involving millions of men -- and, one might add, the enormity of the slaughter, the planned, systematic mass slaughter, in peacetime, initiated by a government against its own citizens -- these are the insignia of twentieth-century totalitarianism (Nazi AND communist), which are without parallel in recorded history. In the totalitarian regimes, as the Germans found out after only a few months of Hitler's rule, every detail of life is prescribed, or proscribed. There is no longer any distinction between private matters and public matters. "There are to be no more private Germans," said Friedrich Sieburg, a Nazi writer; "each is to attain significance only by his service to the state, and to find complete self-fulfillment in his service." "The only person who is still a private individual in Germany," boasted Robert Ley, a member of the Nazi hierarchy, after several years of Nazi rule, "is somebody who is asleep."

In place of the despised "private individuals," the Germans heard daily or hourly about a different kind of entity, a supreme entity, whose will, it was said, is what determines the course and actions of the state: the nation, the whole, the GROUP. Over and over, the Germans heard the idea that underlies the advocacy of omnipotent government, the idea that totalitarians of every kind stress as the justification of their total states: COLLECTIVISM.

Collectivism is the theory that the group (the collective) has primacy over the individual. Collectivism holds that, in human affairs, the collective -- society, the community, the nation, the proletariat, the race, etc. -- is THE UNIT OF REALITY AND THE STANDARD OF VALUE. On this view, the individual has reality only as part of the group, and value only insofar as he serves it; on his own he has no political rights; he is to be sacrificed for the group whenever it -- or its representative, the state -- deems this desirable.

Fascism, said one of its leading spokesmen, Alfredo Rocco, stresses:

"...the necessity, for which the older doctrines make little allowance, of sacrifice, even up to the total immolation of individuals, on behalf of society... For Liberalism (i.e., individualism--note that it's "classic liberalism" not the liberalism as defined today in the U.S.), the individual is the end and society the means; nor is it conceivable that the individual, considered in the dignity of an ultimate finality, be lowered to mere instrumentality. For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends."

"The higher interests involved in the life of the whole," said Hitler in a 1933 speech, "must here set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual." Men, echoed the Nazis, have to "realize that the State is more important than the individual, that individuals must be willing and ready to sacrifice themselves for Nation and Fuhrer."

The people, said the Nazis, "form a true organism," a "living unity", whose cells are individual persons. In reality, therefore -- appearances to the contrary notwithstanding -- there is no such thing as an "isolated individual" or an autonomous man.

Just as the individual is to be regarded merely as a fragment of the group, the Nazis said, so his possessions are to be regarded as a fragment of the group's wealth.

"Private property" as conceived under the liberalistic economy order was a reversal of the true concept of property [wrote Huber]. This "private property" represented the right of the individual to manage and to speculate with inherited or acquired property as he pleased, without regard for the general interests...

German socialism had to overcome this "private", that is, unrestrained and irresponsible view of property. All property is common property. The owner is bound by the people and the Reich to the responsible management of his goods. His legal position is only justified when he satisfies this responsibility to the community. Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation's economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary; what counts is the issue of CONTROL. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property - - so long as the state reserves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property.

If "ownership" means the right to determine the use and disposal of material goods, then Nazism endowed the state with every real prerogative of ownership. What the individual retained was merely a formal deed, a content-less deed, which conferred no rights on its holder. Under communism, there is collective ownership of property DEJURE. Under Nazism, there is the same collective ownership DE FACTO.

During the Hitler years -- in order to finance the party's programs, including the war expenditures -- every social group in Germany was mercilessly exploited and drained. White-collar salaries and the earnings of small businessmen were deliberately held down by government controls, freezes, taxes. Big business was bled by taxes and "special contributions" of every kind, and strangled by the bureaucracy.

At the same time the income of the farmers was held down, and there was a desperate flight to the cities -- where the middle class, especially the small tradesmen, were soon in desperate straits, and where the workers were forced to labor at low wages for increasingly longer hours (up to 60 or more per week).

But the Nazis defended their policies, and the country did not rebel; it accepted the Nazi argument. Selfish individuals may be unhappy, the Nazis said, but what we have established in Germany is the ideal system, SOCIALISM. In its Nazi usage this term is not restricted to a theory of economics; it is to be understood in a fundamental sense. "Socialism" for the Nazis denotes the principle of collectivism as such and its corollary, statism -- in every field of human action, including but not limited to economics.

"To be a socialist", says Goebbels, "is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole." By this definition, the Nazis practiced what they preached. They practiced it at home and then abroad. No one can claim that they did not sacrifice enough individuals.

-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), December 30, 2000.


Under the Nazis, the means of production were not owned by the people. The oligarchs who ran I.G.Farbenindustries, Krupp, Messerschmitt, etc profited by their collaboration with the Nazi state.

The Nazis? Totalitarian? Yes. Statist? Yes. Socialist? No.

I. G. Farben

-- (LeonTrotsky@May.Day), December 30, 2000.


Leon,

So that we can continue to discuss this fruitfully, then, we should at least agree on a working definition of socialism. Would you give yours?

-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), December 31, 2000.


Thanks for the summary, Eve. I will add the book to my list. It sounds like the author is raising some good points. I'm going to bail from cyberspace for the next couple of days while I take care of some winter cleanup and sick friends. Looks like our flu season is starting a month early.

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), December 31, 2000.

eve,

A definition of socialism? Well I certainly wouldn't accept Goebbel's definition of anything except "what is propaganda?". Just because the Nazis called themself socialist does not mean that they were socialists.

Let's start by asserting the classic definition that socialism is an economic system in which the primary means of production are not owned by private citizens. The production of goods and services is not driven by the profit motive. Remember, I said that I am a Utopian. So are you.

-- (LeonTrotsky@Matewan.com), December 31, 2000.


Leon,

I think we have a strong similarity, in substance -- in ultimate effect -- regarding the two systems (socialism and fascism/Nazism). The primary means of production are owned by the government re your definition of socialism; and the primary means of production would be -- and, to a great extent were -- owned by the government at the whim of the Fuhrer (fascism/Nazism)? In both cases, we have a collectivist state. It's only that the socialsts are more up front about it. Make sense so far?

Also, I think we should dispense with the "utopian" aspect. In a debate like this, I really feel it's a superfluous term. I mean, even Hitler in his warped view, had his own "utopian" goals.

-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), January 01, 2001.


Oops...the question mark at the end of "(fascism/Nazism)" should have been a period.

-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), January 01, 2001.



-- Welcome Your New President (lawless@gop.com), January 02, 2001.

OK, Eve, 'fessin' time. My original post was a troll. I wanted to snag a response from hard righties like "Ain't" and from hard lefties like "welcome your new president" (above). Thank you both, guys. I didn't imagine being sucked into a defense of Socialism. Yuck.

-- (LeonTrotsky@I'm_so_dead.commie), January 02, 2001.

Moderation questions? read the FAQ