The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.
This article is several weeks old, but I didn’t see it until now. As Conservative Swede has noted, there are perfectly legitimate reasons for criticizing certain aspects of the democratic system. All Western nations have more or less lost or abandoned control over their borders, and I am very seriously concerned about how easy it is for Islamic organizations and other hostile groups to infiltrate our societies and political parties. However, I’m not sure an alleged lack of batteries and solar power is sufficient reason to support a Leftist dictatorship. If I recall correctly, Mr. Thomas Friedman applauded exporting democracy to Iraq, but he wants the democratic system abolished in the USA because it doesn’t support his Leftist pet causes.
Thomas Friedman — Our One-Party Democracy:
Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power.
Jonah Goldberg — Thomas Friedman is a Liberal Fascist:
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So there you have it. If only America could drop its inefficient and antiquated system, designed in the age before globalization and modernity and, most damning of all, before the lantern of Thomas Friedman’s intellect illuminated the land. If only enlightened experts could do the hard and necessary things that the new age requires, if only we could rely on these planners to set the ship of state right. Now, of course, there are “drawbacks” to such a system: crushing of dissidents with tanks, state control of reproduction, government control of the press and the internet. Omelets and broken eggs, as they say. More to the point, Friedman insists, these “drawbacks” pale in comparison to the system we have today here in America.
I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s. It is exactly the argument that was made in defense of Stalin and Lenin before him (it’s the argument that idiotic, dictator-envying leftists make in defense of Castro and Chavez today). It was the argument made by George Bernard Shaw who yearned for a strong progressive autocracy under a Mussolini, a Hitler or a Stalin (he wasn’t picky in this regard). This is the argument for an “economic dictatorship” pushed by Stuart Chase and the New Dealers. It’s the dream of Herbert Croly and a great many of the Progressives.
Totalitarianism is like cocaine to control freaks like Friedman. Of course they think they are going to be part of the elite imposing it, not a plebe living under it.
Unfortunately, there’s only so much room in the cockpit and rivals need to be eliminated. There are far more lib lefties who want to live “luxury for me but not thee” lives than can be accommodated. Totalitarianisms have a few on top, no real middle class and a plethora of serfs. The only other role is as state muscle sniffing out and killing any opposition.
A useless effete like Friedman would be out of luck, thrown into the furnaces first because of his big mouth and inevitable whining when he’s cast down among the unwashed masses as ex-KGB Yuri Bezmenov outlined.
I remember watching these idiots in Iraq after we toppled Saddam. There they were holding townhall meetings with the natives explaining to them how to have a democratic and free society. Looking back now, it seems so preposterous. They are so stupid. I believe Friedman was among them. I cannot believe that people still listen to these morons.
Fjordman wrote:I am increasingly supporting the conclusion that the political and economic elites throughout the Western world are cooperating on dismantling their nation states in favor of a new, global world order.
I think the political elite have to be told that Orwell’s 1984 is a warning and not a blueprint.