[From article]
"According to the pioneering political scientist Harold Lasswell, the advent of modern society "compelled the development of a whole new technique of social control, mainly through propaganda ... the one means of mass mobilization which is cheaper than violence, bribery, or other possible control techniques." Irving Kristol, propagandist par excellence, foresaw that "intellectuals would move inexorably closer to the seats of authority" and devoted his long career to furthering that rapprochement, recruiting lavish support from an anxious business class for the right kind of intellectuals. The contemporary neoconservative intelligentsia, including Charles Krauthammer, is the result."
[. . .]
America, it is true, has no concentration camps or overseas colonies, and our government regularly proclaims its devotion to freedom. For Krauthammer, those facts evidently outweigh our having subverted dozens of governments, many of them democratically elected, and supported dozens of others that were not democratically elected at all, with the only consistent motive being the promotion of a favorable investment climate for American business.
[Democracy is not a suicide pact. Electing a leader or government that wants to dismantle democracy cannot be tolerated.]
[. . .]
It is true (though you won't learn it from Krauthammer) that the United States has done a great deal to undermine international law and institutions, having used weapons of mass destruction for political purposes (Hiroshima and Nagasaki);
[Do not believe that ending the war saving lives was a political purpose. If anything it was a humane decision. Because the Japanese refused to surrender, an invasion of the two islands would have caused more human deaths than died in the two atom bombings.]
[. . .]
About Central America, Krauthammer resorts to brazen falsification. Reagan's so-called "illegal war,"
[no mention in most references to the drug cartels operating in Mena, Arkansas where the drugs were exchanged for guns. The entire state government was in on that operation. Ambrose, Evans-Pritchard, The Secret Life of Bill Clinton
[. . .]
[Scialabba dismisses statement that Palestinians will not recognize Israel's right to exist. That remains the obstacle to peace. But also there are 45 Muslim dominant nations. Only one Jewish state. Why is that a problem?]
[. . .]
For, Krauthammer continues, "as Chesterton put it, 'The trouble when people stop believing in God is not that they thereafter believe in nothing; it is that they believe in anything.' In this century," Krauthammer grimly reminds us, "'anything' has included Hitler, Stalin, and Mao." It has also, I would remind him, included Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and Albert Camus.
http://www.georgescialabba.net/mtgs/2014/05/floats-like-a-vulture/print/
Floats Like a Vulture
May 22, 2014
Things That Matter: Three Decades of Pastimes, Passions and Politics by Charles Krauthammer.
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