Care to show us where those dreaded ‘FEMA camps’ might be? And also show your sources. (Alex Jones is not a legitimate source.)

‘One of Us! One of Us! Heeheeheeheehee!!!’

The writing really is surprisingly good. The commentary, well, it’s not quite HateWatch…

Unless you consider Jason the average SPLC commenter.

How so? I don’t have a problem with ideas simply because they come from the right; rather, I take issue with the way that the right spends so much time demonizing people and organizations without getting into the specifics of their grievances. Just once, I would like to hear statements from the right that start like this: “The Fed should not alter the discount rate because…” or “Instead of changing the reserve requirement for banks, the Fed should…”.

So how could the Fed operate better? What specific actions has it taken that were wrong, and what should have been done instead? I don’t have answers to these questions…but if you do, Dan, you have my attention.

http://www.cracked.com/article.....rying.html

This video, specifically, which is available on the web and has been for years.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/pbs.....o-in-2008/

We have a GOP candidate running for President right now that parrots JBS nonsense word for word. A candidate that has been a Representative from a large wealthy state for decades.

Ron Paul. This is why they are relevant.

But it wasn’t.

It’s undemocratic to a large part because of the secrecy. Imagine if the DoD were run like the Fed: the Joint Chiefs being appointed to 14-year terms and thereafter being essentially unaccountable.

The point I am trying to make, and I’m not doing a good job because it is getting lost, is that not everything the far right says about the fed is a lie or a conspiracy theory.

The quote in the original article was that the Fed was “born in secrecy and secrecy has been its byword ever since”. I claim that that is a true statement. Or at the least, a reasonable person may believe it to be true.

What I am saying is, when you attack the right, do not do so on issues for which they reasonably can be seen as correct.

The far right is very wacky in many beliefs, particularly about fiat currency and the gold standard. But the Federal Reserve is often very bad indeed, in the way it operates and the specific actions it takes. These things do not become virtues simply because fringe groups are also opposed to them.

You have to remember that many of the people who are saying “audit” the Fed would like it eliminated, to be replaced by private banks which would have no oversight whatsoever.

The Soviet Story was produced by Latvian nationalists who have a difficult situation: They want to celebrate their nationalist heroes, but those heroes were famous for fighting in the SS and slaughtering the Jewish population of Latvia. After the war, the CIA courted many emigres from these countries and taught them how to present their history. They would claim, “We were against Hitler and Stalin!” Of course they had a strange way of fighting against Hitler. Joining the Waffen SS and its other auxiliary units is a strange way to fight Hitler. In any case, it took literally decades to teach these pigs how to walk on their hind legs, meaning to prevent them from occasionally letting loose with talk of “Judeo-Bolshevism” and getting them to praise liberal capitalism.

In any case, the film is rife with historical errors. For example, it cites documents which allege collaboration between the NKVD and Gestapo, but these documents were actually forgeries circulated by an anti-Semitic Russian nationalist organization known as Pamyat. It also falsely claims that Engels advocated a “revolutionary holocaust” when in fact Engels never used such a word and did not advocate what they claimed. That is among other idiotic lies in the film. Some people who were quoted in the film complained that their quotes were taken out of context as well.

As for the claim that Communism has killed more than fascism, this is simply false. There is no way to say otherwise unless you blame all deaths in wars involving Communists on the Communist side, and count deaths which occur all the time in the non-socialist world as “killings”.

As for your attempt to equate Communism and neo-liberal capitalism, it is simply wrong. Only by moving beyond capitalism can we have a system which can limit resource use. Capitalism requires constant short-term profit, ergo it can never solve this contradiction.

Both systems pursue the same end result, infinite exploitation of natural resources to provide for exponential growth of humans material need and both increase complexity. Organizational methodology differs between the systems, with one representing soft totalitarianism and the other hard.

In studying the 20th century and genocide, communism took far more human life than did fascism, however left out of the equation is the byproduct of capitalism and Western economic expansion (destruction of indigenous peoples), in that while not an explicit goal of resource exploitation was an accepted byproduct.

Why in your opinion has neo-liberalism replaced fascism, communism and pure capitalism as the world-wide norm in both governance and the economy?

Now hold on there, buckaroo. Are you refuting the Bircher quote that “secret” and “secrecy” are bywords of the Fed? Isn’t that a true sentiment? How many times has the Fed been audited? How much oversight are they subject to?

Secondly, are you asserting that there is no other possible currency system, no possible other means of constituting the Federal Reserve, no possible enhancements of control or accountability, that could have allowed the advancement of US economic power following WWII? That the Fed is unimprovable? That’s a profound statement.

“Hundreds of small banks failing every five years or so isn’t good for the economy.”

And is the Federal Reserve, as it has been implemented, the _only_possible_ solution to this problem?

The point is not whether fiat currency or the Federal Reserve are good or bad policies. It is whether the Birchers are makign true statements when they accuse the Fed of being undemocratic (it is) and of operating in secret (it does).

It does not do us any good to dismiss the far right for statements that a reasonable person could see as true.

BTW, I like your commentary while not always agreeing with you. In an earlier post I was genuinely curious as to whether you agreed or disagreed with Ruben and Reynardine about the dangers posed by the anti-immigrant wing of the GOP. Still am.