"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies."
--Professor Carroll Quigley, advisor to JFK and LBJ
I would say that her description was the de facto US government, back in the 'sixties. Sorry; it should have been "his", not "her". More importantly, like so many of that era, Quigley was a crypto-communist who would have fit perfectly in the Roosevelt Administration. For here's another Quigley quote which also seems to prove that he had a very limited vocabulary, given the number of times he repeated bogeyman words, like "insatiable" and "greed":
“We are violating every aspect of life by turning everything into a ripoff because we have adopted the view that insatiable individualistic greed must run the world. We are living in a very dangerous age in which insatiably greedy men are prepared to sacrifice anybody’s health and tranquility to satisfy their own insatiable greed for money and power. I am aghast at what selfishness, and the drive for power have done to our society. I worry as I find the world so increasingly horrible that I do not see how anything as wonderful as your life can escape."
Well, I'm 76 and have been watching politics with great interest since I was 14, which is when JFK was assassinated. What Professor Quigley describes is what I observed for a very long time until perhaps the past 10-15 years.
"their idea of democracy is a political system where the people get to vote for candidates approved by the government"
The old-fashioned name for this arrangement is "people's democracy". There used to be many people's democracies, but in most cases, the ungrateful peoples chose to live under capitalist oppression when they were finally given the choice.
Not only China. I can think of a few Middle Eastern dictatorships in which the "winner" got 95% of the vote. We all know that would never happen in a free election.
I keep having this nagging vision that Yuval Noah Harari gave us a couple warnings about what was in store... then chose to shut up about it and just proceed with it.
Someone whose last name begins with 'U' also did that. He advised his minions that 'everything must look democratic but we must keep all threads in our hands' ...
LOL You go for "that's like HITLER!" like a good little leftist. Your leftist teachers would be proud of you. You are too ignorant to compare with the leftists attacking people in the Weimar Republic, which you know nothing about.
After the 1940s East Germany was controlled by communists for generations, and Stasi was spying on everyone. But American idiots will still talk about "Gestapo!" instead of Stasi in comment sections. Even though Gestapo was a small organization with just 15 people in a city the size of Frankfurt, relying entirely on public tips to root out the communist terrorists. But American cucks have to compare everything to "Hitler!" and "Gestapo!" or why not "SS!" And "hey, didya know the NAZIS were SOCIALISTS like the DEMOCRATS?" You people are so fucking dumb.
All signs of increasing desperation, as unsettling as they are. They are not operating from a position of strength. We can count on them destroying what is left of their credibility as they pursue populist parties all across Europe.
We are surely seeing the death of the old world and the birth of something new. Most European nations are in the same boat, although Trump has perhaps given the USA a stay of execution.
But I think we all sense the shenanigans in Germany is just the canary in the coal mine. Mentally disturbed technocrats are not suited to running anything. It is only a matter of time before they write themselves out of the picture. This is just another nail hammered into the democratic coffin.
They are doing real harm with their hairbrained green energy policies .
As I wrote above , in Desperation ( as you wisely put it ) UC San Diego dropped the SAT in order to get more minority students at the school ..now 1 in 200 Freshman need remedial math and the school needs to quickly find dozens of extra math teachers .
If you have ever tried arguing with one of them it quickly becomes an exercise in futility. They absolutely cannot accept selecting for some special characteristic will have an effect on quality. They sincerely believe they will get both the pleasing quota person and high quality. The real fanatics think it improves quality because patriarchal white cisgender swines like me are excluded. They think we will just pick really good women/blacks/gays etc. and maintain quality.
But they are self correcting. These schemes attempt to circumvent reality, in this can innate differences between individuals and observed characteristics of groups. The Chinese don't make this mistake which is why their kids don't need remedial anything.
That is one of the correctives. Our rivals are cheering on our stupidity.
I have said before that, just when I think the UK is the maddest place on earth, Germany pops up with something dumb. So they want everyone to promise to vote for the correct candidate and, to ensure that happens, they want to only field the correct candidate. Democracy eh? Great isn't it?
In 2020 the Democrats could not find a candidate to run against Trump . Bernie Sanders was leading but he would surely lose the national election …so they gave Bernie the “ heave Ho “ and put up a cardboard cut out of ole Joe Biden . For the next 4 years we had a “ Cadaver in Chief “ …oh yeah , many say the “ stole “ the election to …Save Democracy
Those who now scream to demand such 'confession' from candidates for public office while banning all those on 'a list' - so far only for elected offices, but who knows when it'll become mandatory for all who want employment in government departments - are apparently too young to recall the "Kommunistenerlass" (a decree to bann everyone who belonged to or had contact with lefty or official communist organisations in the 1970s).
Ar that time, it was deemed to be a stain on the democratic image of the then Bundesrepublik. Now? Those who scream loudest for an AfD-Bann would've been subject to the 'Kommunistenerlass'.
It was the "Radikalenerlass", since it was designed to exclude not only the recently founded West German communist party (DKP) but others, such as Maoist groupings and the terrorists of the RAF (Baader-Meinhof Gang).
In contrast to today, the decree was made by the SPD in an attempt to seal themselves off from infiltration by the far left, and also to reassure its junior coalition party, the FDP. The decree was made in early 1972, when Chancellor Willy Brandt's rapprochement with the DDR was well underway, culminating by the end of that year in the "Basic Treaty", which established mutual recognition between the two Germanys. The Radikalenerlass was intended to show that this rapprochement did not imply that there would be any accommodation with the anti-constitutional left in West Germany.
In the event, the DDR regime managed to place one of its agents as a personal assistant of Brandt - a factor in his resignation in 1974. The DDR had even managed to buy the votes of two CDU members to ensure that Brandt would remain as Chancellor in the elections just before the Basic Treaty was signed.
To avoid any mistaken conclusions, I should add that his anarchism wasn't what he called the bewhiskered bomb-throwing kind. It was more like the kind of extremely limited government suitable for a people civilized enough to govern themselves on a local scale.
"His interest in Tolkien? That surely is a joke, isn't it?"
The Shire never adopted an open-borders policy. Tolkien clearly thought that the hobbits were better off with their own privileged monoculture, instead of bringing in hordes of orcs to diversify the Shire. Like, what an old fascist!
By the way, regarding your previous post, I studied in Giessen for a year between 1991-1992. I scanned the photos and videos for anything that looked vaguely familiar but could recognise nothing.
If there is a "loyalty" list for government officials to sign, then no one who is a government official can run for office as an AfD candidate. Then the list will be extended to businesses that receive contracts from the government; and in the socialist West, the government is the biggest source of contracts. Also, having government contracts make businesses more successful in getting other contracts, so they come to dominate.
So in this way, it becomes impossible for successful, educated people to be AfD candidates, as they work for successful businesses or they are high up in the public administration.
That is aside from the terrorism nationalists are exposed to all over the West. They are attacked in their own homes. Their windows are smashed at night, the terrorists enter and beat the victim with bats. This has happened many times, but people don't know about it. If they don't attack this way, they wait outside and attack the victim when he leaves the house. Or they smash the windows and throw in burning rags, or otherwise vandalize the home. They burn people's cars.
They put up stickers with the target's face all over his neighborhood, saying he is a "racist" member of a nationalist party. They spray-paint this in the apartment building and on his door. They put notes in the mailboxes of his neighbors. They spray-paint the walls at his workplace and threaten his employer.
The socialist co-workers will support the terrorists, and smear the "racist". With the media and socialist labor unions supporting their harrassment, the victim will be ostracized, as no one dares come near him. His career is destroyed, he is forced to leave. If the employer is a socialist or votes for a "liberal" party, which today means simply a lower-tax leftist, he won't give the victim a good reference. The labor union will support the employer if he fires the victim for creating an "unsafe workplace" - this has happened, and the court then sides with the union and the employer against the victim.
Nationalist party members are forced to find ways to live at unlisted addresses, which has become increasingly difficult. The socialists have made sure that this will be difficult. If a nationalist party member runs for office, or if his name is leaked by infiltrators or government-funded hackers, then he will be attacked in the ways listed above.
Those who become targets for the rest of their lives will lose girlfriends, or wives if they were married. And they can't find someone new. They can't live ordinary lives. Forget having a car or going on vacation, or anything else above mere survival.
You, reader, don't know about this. Because the media didn't tell you. You have no idea what is going on. You think the ban on AfD members in government in Rheinland-Phalz is the worst thing that has happened? Nationalist parties in Europe would have had 30% of the votes as early as in the 1990s without the terrorism by communist groups funded through taxes. This terrorism kept people from joining and ruined the lives of those who did.
So the "Office for the Protection of the Constitution" gets to decide that groups peacefully opposed to flooding Germany with violent 3rd worlders are "extremist".
This is the diametrical opposite of democracy. It is tyrannical suppression of legitimate opposition.
If "loyalty to the Constitution" is a requirement for entry into politics, doesn't that mean constitutional reform is impossible except through violence?
Eugy - Assuming you are still living there, was is the mood of the folks at the ground level. Do they even pay attention to this stuff and at least disagree?
I’m in USA too . We need to pray that the republicans win in 2028 . Already , the Democrats are talking “ revenge “ . They do NOT plan on “ playing to the middle “ in 2028 .hopefully that will change but of the left wins in 2028 ..Tyranny is what we will see .
What could be more n@zi-like / less democratic than banning Germany’s most popular political party.
A rose, is a rose, is a rose - and an authoritarian, by any other name is still an authoritarian. The main problem never was the n@zis, but rather authoritarianism, and the times that created them, and the human lust for power
Apparently their idea of democracy is a political system where the people get to vote for candidates approved by the government.
That is literally and without exaggeration exactly their idea of democracy.
That "politics is war" post you'd made that time just never leaves my head.
"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies."
--Professor Carroll Quigley, advisor to JFK and LBJ
I would say that her description was the de facto US government, back in the 'sixties. Sorry; it should have been "his", not "her". More importantly, like so many of that era, Quigley was a crypto-communist who would have fit perfectly in the Roosevelt Administration. For here's another Quigley quote which also seems to prove that he had a very limited vocabulary, given the number of times he repeated bogeyman words, like "insatiable" and "greed":
“We are violating every aspect of life by turning everything into a ripoff because we have adopted the view that insatiable individualistic greed must run the world. We are living in a very dangerous age in which insatiably greedy men are prepared to sacrifice anybody’s health and tranquility to satisfy their own insatiable greed for money and power. I am aghast at what selfishness, and the drive for power have done to our society. I worry as I find the world so increasingly horrible that I do not see how anything as wonderful as your life can escape."
Well, I'm 76 and have been watching politics with great interest since I was 14, which is when JFK was assassinated. What Professor Quigley describes is what I observed for a very long time until perhaps the past 10-15 years.
Quigley was also Bill Clinton’s top mentor, fyi.
We must use Un Democratic means …to save Democracy
USA is not a democracy, but Europe? Nebulous.
"their idea of democracy is a political system where the people get to vote for candidates approved by the government"
The old-fashioned name for this arrangement is "people's democracy". There used to be many people's democracies, but in most cases, the ungrateful peoples chose to live under capitalist oppression when they were finally given the choice.
Prezactly!
And that strategy is being implemented around the world.
We seem to have dropped any pretense to 'democracy'.
It’s Chinese democracy. Only candidates approved by the State can run, just like in Hong Kong.
I can’t believe these people take their own commitment to democracy seriously. They can’t possibly, can they?
They know better than the voters the danger of electing the "wrong" people to office, being the "wrong" people themselves...
Not only China. I can think of a few Middle Eastern dictatorships in which the "winner" got 95% of the vote. We all know that would never happen in a free election.
This is close to reality where:
The elite's idea of democracy is a scam political theatre where the constituents get to elect candidates pre-selected by them only !!!
Honestly there isn't any place anywhere where anyone is truly willing to sit down and take it when the other guy wins.
Less than 100 years and everything's gone to hell again. Everywhere.
I keep having this nagging vision that Yuval Noah Harari gave us a couple warnings about what was in store... then chose to shut up about it and just proceed with it.
https://brownstone.org/articles/transhumanism-and-ai-an-ideology-of-death/
Really, if we'd only not invented language. There's no telling where you'll end up if you can tell your own crazy thoughts to other people.
The fourth turning
Nothing new etc. etc. If you take out all the silly stuff there's a lot of observed wisdom in foundational texts.
Didn't someone whose last name begins with "H" also ban political parties?
Someone whose last name begins with 'U' also did that. He advised his minions that 'everything must look democratic but we must keep all threads in our hands' ...
"U"? Frank Underwood? (look him up 😁)
Walter Ulbricht, a.k.a. "Der Spitzbart" - look him up.
Oh yeah, the DDR guy. I remember him. 🤢
LOL
LOL You go for "that's like HITLER!" like a good little leftist. Your leftist teachers would be proud of you. You are too ignorant to compare with the leftists attacking people in the Weimar Republic, which you know nothing about.
After the 1940s East Germany was controlled by communists for generations, and Stasi was spying on everyone. But American idiots will still talk about "Gestapo!" instead of Stasi in comment sections. Even though Gestapo was a small organization with just 15 people in a city the size of Frankfurt, relying entirely on public tips to root out the communist terrorists. But American cucks have to compare everything to "Hitler!" and "Gestapo!" or why not "SS!" And "hey, didya know the NAZIS were SOCIALISTS like the DEMOCRATS?" You people are so fucking dumb.
Here you go. Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/dIh1eOw0zV8?si=J_5DPKHO0NQHTkFY
"Didn't someone whose last name begins with "H" also ban political parties?"
Sure did. Hồ Chí Minh was the name. Totally uncool with other political parties.
Harry Zelenskyy?
No, parties are fine, he just banned elections.
All signs of increasing desperation, as unsettling as they are. They are not operating from a position of strength. We can count on them destroying what is left of their credibility as they pursue populist parties all across Europe.
We are surely seeing the death of the old world and the birth of something new. Most European nations are in the same boat, although Trump has perhaps given the USA a stay of execution.
But I think we all sense the shenanigans in Germany is just the canary in the coal mine. Mentally disturbed technocrats are not suited to running anything. It is only a matter of time before they write themselves out of the picture. This is just another nail hammered into the democratic coffin.
They are doing real harm with their hairbrained green energy policies .
As I wrote above , in Desperation ( as you wisely put it ) UC San Diego dropped the SAT in order to get more minority students at the school ..now 1 in 200 Freshman need remedial math and the school needs to quickly find dozens of extra math teachers .
Nothing good comes from desperate decisions.
That was a totally predictable consequence of DEI (except to DEI proponents).
When you deliberately select for the less qualified, what will you obtain?
One word: duh.
If you have ever tried arguing with one of them it quickly becomes an exercise in futility. They absolutely cannot accept selecting for some special characteristic will have an effect on quality. They sincerely believe they will get both the pleasing quota person and high quality. The real fanatics think it improves quality because patriarchal white cisgender swines like me are excluded. They think we will just pick really good women/blacks/gays etc. and maintain quality.
But they are self correcting. These schemes attempt to circumvent reality, in this can innate differences between individuals and observed characteristics of groups. The Chinese don't make this mistake which is why their kids don't need remedial anything.
That is one of the correctives. Our rivals are cheering on our stupidity.
"May you live in interesting times"
I have said before that, just when I think the UK is the maddest place on earth, Germany pops up with something dumb. So they want everyone to promise to vote for the correct candidate and, to ensure that happens, they want to only field the correct candidate. Democracy eh? Great isn't it?
In 2020 the Democrats could not find a candidate to run against Trump . Bernie Sanders was leading but he would surely lose the national election …so they gave Bernie the “ heave Ho “ and put up a cardboard cut out of ole Joe Biden . For the next 4 years we had a “ Cadaver in Chief “ …oh yeah , many say the “ stole “ the election to …Save Democracy
Save Democracy is just code for Save Democrats and keep them in power forever.
The UK is outright cancelling elections on a regular basis now, not just banning specific political parties.
Those who now scream to demand such 'confession' from candidates for public office while banning all those on 'a list' - so far only for elected offices, but who knows when it'll become mandatory for all who want employment in government departments - are apparently too young to recall the "Kommunistenerlass" (a decree to bann everyone who belonged to or had contact with lefty or official communist organisations in the 1970s).
Ar that time, it was deemed to be a stain on the democratic image of the then Bundesrepublik. Now? Those who scream loudest for an AfD-Bann would've been subject to the 'Kommunistenerlass'.
How times have changed ...
It was the "Radikalenerlass", since it was designed to exclude not only the recently founded West German communist party (DKP) but others, such as Maoist groupings and the terrorists of the RAF (Baader-Meinhof Gang).
In contrast to today, the decree was made by the SPD in an attempt to seal themselves off from infiltration by the far left, and also to reassure its junior coalition party, the FDP. The decree was made in early 1972, when Chancellor Willy Brandt's rapprochement with the DDR was well underway, culminating by the end of that year in the "Basic Treaty", which established mutual recognition between the two Germanys. The Radikalenerlass was intended to show that this rapprochement did not imply that there would be any accommodation with the anti-constitutional left in West Germany.
In the event, the DDR regime managed to place one of its agents as a personal assistant of Brandt - a factor in his resignation in 1974. The DDR had even managed to buy the votes of two CDU members to ensure that Brandt would remain as Chancellor in the elections just before the Basic Treaty was signed.
"Bat Shit Crazy"
His interest in Tolkien? That surely is a joke, isn't it?
no it's real, it's in this insane intelligence assessment the LfV compiled on the man.
Sauron could not imagine that anyone would want to destroy the Ring rather than use it to seize power themselves.
That Tolkien fellow was an admitted anarchist. It's in his Letters and at the heart of his book.
But the powers that be don't like the idea of being reduced to powerless, mostly ceremonial figures like Will Whitfoot, the mayor of the Shire.
To avoid any mistaken conclusions, I should add that his anarchism wasn't what he called the bewhiskered bomb-throwing kind. It was more like the kind of extremely limited government suitable for a people civilized enough to govern themselves on a local scale.
OK, but why does that matter?
Did he read Orwell?
How about "Brave New World"?
Are these supposedly "red flags"?
"His interest in Tolkien? That surely is a joke, isn't it?"
The Shire never adopted an open-borders policy. Tolkien clearly thought that the hobbits were better off with their own privileged monoculture, instead of bringing in hordes of orcs to diversify the Shire. Like, what an old fascist!
Jesus Christ.
By the way, regarding your previous post, I studied in Giessen for a year between 1991-1992. I scanned the photos and videos for anything that looked vaguely familiar but could recognise nothing.
Definitely not.
The "left" have no sense of humour. Fact.
Especially the Germans - according to the WE won the War morons.
I actually mean was Eugyppius joking. I know that he does have a sense of humour.
If there is a "loyalty" list for government officials to sign, then no one who is a government official can run for office as an AfD candidate. Then the list will be extended to businesses that receive contracts from the government; and in the socialist West, the government is the biggest source of contracts. Also, having government contracts make businesses more successful in getting other contracts, so they come to dominate.
So in this way, it becomes impossible for successful, educated people to be AfD candidates, as they work for successful businesses or they are high up in the public administration.
That is aside from the terrorism nationalists are exposed to all over the West. They are attacked in their own homes. Their windows are smashed at night, the terrorists enter and beat the victim with bats. This has happened many times, but people don't know about it. If they don't attack this way, they wait outside and attack the victim when he leaves the house. Or they smash the windows and throw in burning rags, or otherwise vandalize the home. They burn people's cars.
They put up stickers with the target's face all over his neighborhood, saying he is a "racist" member of a nationalist party. They spray-paint this in the apartment building and on his door. They put notes in the mailboxes of his neighbors. They spray-paint the walls at his workplace and threaten his employer.
The socialist co-workers will support the terrorists, and smear the "racist". With the media and socialist labor unions supporting their harrassment, the victim will be ostracized, as no one dares come near him. His career is destroyed, he is forced to leave. If the employer is a socialist or votes for a "liberal" party, which today means simply a lower-tax leftist, he won't give the victim a good reference. The labor union will support the employer if he fires the victim for creating an "unsafe workplace" - this has happened, and the court then sides with the union and the employer against the victim.
Nationalist party members are forced to find ways to live at unlisted addresses, which has become increasingly difficult. The socialists have made sure that this will be difficult. If a nationalist party member runs for office, or if his name is leaked by infiltrators or government-funded hackers, then he will be attacked in the ways listed above.
Those who become targets for the rest of their lives will lose girlfriends, or wives if they were married. And they can't find someone new. They can't live ordinary lives. Forget having a car or going on vacation, or anything else above mere survival.
You, reader, don't know about this. Because the media didn't tell you. You have no idea what is going on. You think the ban on AfD members in government in Rheinland-Phalz is the worst thing that has happened? Nationalist parties in Europe would have had 30% of the votes as early as in the 1990s without the terrorism by communist groups funded through taxes. This terrorism kept people from joining and ruined the lives of those who did.
So the "Office for the Protection of the Constitution" gets to decide that groups peacefully opposed to flooding Germany with violent 3rd worlders are "extremist".
This is the diametrical opposite of democracy. It is tyrannical suppression of legitimate opposition.
If "loyalty to the Constitution" is a requirement for entry into politics, doesn't that mean constitutional reform is impossible except through violence?
Banishment seems to be the left’s “ go too “ solution .
In 2020 UC San Diego banned the SAT or any other standardized test for incoming freshman .
It seems not enough minority students were being admitted .
UC San Diego ranks 6 th among US public Universities ( behind UCLA & Berkeley ) .
Before the ban 1 in 200 Freshman needed remedial math .
After Banning the SAT , 1 in 8 Freshman now needs remedial math .
25% could not answer “ 7+2 = __+3 “ …that is 2 nd grade math .
“ Banning “ has consequences.
Eugy - Assuming you are still living there, was is the mood of the folks at the ground level. Do they even pay attention to this stuff and at least disagree?
In my U.S. armchair opinion, Germany is teetering on falling down the path into the abyss of tyranny…look to the UK for where you are heading.
I’m in USA too . We need to pray that the republicans win in 2028 . Already , the Democrats are talking “ revenge “ . They do NOT plan on “ playing to the middle “ in 2028 .hopefully that will change but of the left wins in 2028 ..Tyranny is what we will see .
"wahhhh waaahhhh this is just like the Nazis"
- libtard commenters above lol
What could be more n@zi-like / less democratic than banning Germany’s most popular political party.
A rose, is a rose, is a rose - and an authoritarian, by any other name is still an authoritarian. The main problem never was the n@zis, but rather authoritarianism, and the times that created them, and the human lust for power