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IPFS News Link • Politics

Trump's Most Bitter Enemies

• https://www.lewrockwell.com

My longtime friend Ralph Raico reminded me that Thomas Szasz used to complain about "Jewish Nazis" in the psychiatric profession. This was the term by which Szasz, a Hungarian Jewish scholar, referred to other Jews in his field who wished to deal with those they didn't like as demented and possibly in need of institutionalization. Ralph was suggesting that Krauthammer, who in fact is a psychiatrist, might fit the type that Szasz was describing, that is, someone who can't recognize an honest difference of opinion without suspecting that his opponent represents an existential threat. From my own impressions, it seems that Ralph may have a point, and the point that he makes would easily apply to neoconservative spokesmen for a suborned and mendacious conservative movement.

As I stressed in an earlier commentary, I don't believe that Krauthammer and his allies are simply misguided American patriots when they attack those who aren't as enthusiastic as they are about certain designated holy wars. America, from this perspective, is great because it has waged something comparable to Old Testament wars of extermination against the forces of absolute evil. Whether warring down Confederate soldiers in the Civil War, smashing the "German militarists" in the Great War; or incinerating Japanese cities in World War Two, these are the things that we're supposed to celebrate ecstatically and unconditionally as good Americans.

I have held conversations with people who believe that some of our bloody past military actions were necessary, to preserve the American Union or to deal decisively with a foreign enemy. Like Ralph, I find myself often disagreeing with those who hold these positions. But I would never question that those who express them are motivated by patriotic feelings and a genuine if sometimes misguided love for their country. Needless to say, I don't have the same sympathetic feeling when neocons start ranting against the usual enemies or appeal to our supposedly better natures to humiliate their defeated objects of hate, for example, when Max Boot, Jonah Goldberg, Jeff Jacoby and Krauthammer call upon the government tear down or efface any symbol that might lead us to respect the defeated Confederacy.

Such unseemly behavior is driven by a certain type of hysteria that I have encountered many times among noticeably fearful Jews.  Such people, who are now our authorized conservative opinion-holders, consider certain groups to be "bad for the Jews," and one can list these baddies without breaking a sweat. They would include traditional American Southerners, Germans and Germany's allies in World War Two, Arabs and perhaps to a lesser extent Russians. Neocons rejoice for their own parochial reasons that these enemies were weakened or defeated and wish to have us go on recalling their awfulness. Anyone who thinks we've done enough celebrating or hating is likely to anger our "conservatives" who would consider our insufficient enthusiasm for their fixations to be "un-American."


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