41 Comments

LOL...I always wonder when I read these: does Rod read them, do you know? Do you two have any kind of "relationship?"

That is one weird dude.

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So for his next book about leftwing totalitarianism in the U.S., Dreher is interviewing people in Russia who are mostly over 80 years old, remember Stalin, and lived through the worst of the Soviet regime. Dreher then tells these old folks that the Left in America is becoming just like the Communist Party that oppressed them and their families. Alarmed, they tell him that sounds very dangerous. Dreher then claims his fear of the American Left has been validated by people who suffered under a totalitarian regime themselves, and he plans to write an entire book based on the old Russians’ reactions to the lies he tells them. That’s about the gist of it.

And don’t get me started on the obscene outlandishness of Dreher trying to portray the *Left*as the authoritarian bogeymen while Trump is in the White House. Yeesh.

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He is using the same argument that segregationist used during the civil rights movement. The feds pushing for civil rights for black people was the equivalent of persecuting the bigots for their sincerely held beliefs, which are ordained by the almighty God. I am sure there were cranks during this time putting out pamphlets about how the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were abominations because it made so business owners had to serve black people and you couldn't say "nigger" in public anymore without people glaring at you.

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As a non-Southerner who lived most of my adult life in the South, I can assure that not only did that happen, but people are still smarting about it.

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Frankly, I'm astonished that we haven't yet gotten a suit before the Supreme Court demanding the religious freedom to not serve minorities.

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Oh don’t worry, I’m sure it’s coming.

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Yes, there are a number of religions that view interracial marriage as alternately 'impossible' (in Truth) or an abomination, and I've been waiting for some clerk….

Here I will commend, for a change, my Orthodox notional kinsmen: my civil marriage to a non-Jew is considered extremely sinful to them, but they understand the difference between civil and religious—they might anathematise a rabbi who'd officiate at something claiming to be a religious ceremony and (for example) refuse to recognise a restaurant's certification of kashrut he might issue, and that's completely their right….

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I hope he talks to Lt. Col. Vindman

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Is this actually happening? Didn’t Jonah Goldberg do this already? History repeats itself, the first as tragedy, then as farce, and finally as farts?

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(hat tip to our gracious host)

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I wish I could post an audio file here.

About 10 years ago, I interviewed a WWII veteran for the radio station I was running at the time. Obama still had that new-president smell, but the Right was already screaming about how it was a dictator and worse than Hitler. So I asked this veteran what he thought about that comparison. I figured his thoughts would be particularly relevant since he was a veteran of the Wehrmacht and had fought in France, Greece, Russia, and North Africa before being taken prisoner and getting shipped to the U.S. as a POW.

Fred's response was that the people making the comparison of Obama to Hitler had no idea what they were talking about, and he was more than a little bit pissed off that they would so trivialize such a monster.

It's not nice to see Rod or anyone else doing the same thing with Stalin. But that's America's conservative movement: Trivialize the past while worshiping that past. Hence, taxation is worse than slavery, but actual slavery was pretty good for the slaves. Or being criticized on Twitter is worse than the Holocaust, but the actual Holocaust is completely overblown (if not completely fake).

I hate these people.

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Considering Stalin enjoys high approval ratings ("A record 70% of Russian respondents say the late dictator of the former Soviet Union played a positive role for Russia, according to a recent poll by the independent Moscow-based Levada Center. Stalin's previous high mark for approval was 54% in 2016...A further 51% of respondents said they viewed Stalin as a person in a favorable light, the highest percentage since 2001"), far higher than Donald Trump, I hope Dreher does indeed do this, and trudges far, through many a snow-blanketed street, fruitlessly seeking octogenarians who aren't nostalgic for the Soviet Union and the days of the Great Patriotic War, until he finally collapses in a doorway and freezes to death like the Little Match Girl.

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Re: Dreher and his fans: As always, fuck their feelings.

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I always choose my fast food emporia based on their ideological stance. That’s why I frequent Karl Juniors Borscht Cafe and Lil Mao’s Hot Pot Shack.

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I prefer Burger Führer myself.

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Knish-A-Linsky

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I confess a weakness for Long John Galt’s. Those dollar-sign-shaped deep fried fish filets are the bomb.

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Pink-Beria.

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Chick-Fil-A is alright I guess, but I prefer the chicken sandwiches at Put Jack in the Box Until He Confesses. Also, if get the 32 oz, suitable for waterboarding beverage, you can keep the cup.

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They’re the ones with the cloth napkins, right? I think they tried Bounty for a while but went back because they were getting too many requests for plungers.

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I love the Communist Menufasto at the Borscht Cafe

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One thing I owe to you, Roy, is the ludicrous pleasure of hate-reading this ridiculous little man's umbrage-filled dribblings. I never would have encountered him otherwise.

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What’s funny, at least to me, is that I had no idea anything had happened re Chick-fil-A until someone posted a Dreher tweet about it in an LGM comment thread. And the main reaction was, what did they do? From Dreher it sounds like parades of progressives are filling the streets celebrating this “victory,” when it was more like, oh , right, Chick-fil-A is a thing that exists, well, good for them.

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Liberal Fascism 2: Actually, They're Communists.

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Make up your mind, Fartberg!

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I seem to remember a positive New Yorker profile of Dreher. Ingrate.

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Here in CFA Central the news was greeted with something less than a shrug. Because there isn't a college campus in the metro area that doesn't have a store, if not within walking distance, right in the cafeteria.

Dan and Bubba will just have to disguise their donations through the foundation, as usual.

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Dreher's updates and replies to himself make for a solid read.

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Given you were beat and took the easy path on this i'd say this was a sterling success, Sir. Also, "Just the Tip, Trumper" *snort*

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Someone [ maybe at Atrios' ] suggested that the reason for the change is the increasingly typical reaction to someone very close to the big bosses coming out as gay.

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(This is what you write when you're *tired*? Jeez. We should all be so tired.)

It goes without, or maybe with, saying, that Dreher would write essentially the same column if someone on the CFA board proposed that they stop donating to anti-LGBQ orgs *and it was voted down.* The topic is catnip to Brother Rod: He can both flaunt his gourmand preferences AND show he and his family have got the common touch, plus he can, regardless of silly old "reality," continue to act the virtuous, brave victim.

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My favourite part of Dreher's endorsement of Carlson: 'large parts of our country depopulated by suicide and opiate abuse'. 'Large'? 'Depopulated'? Any depopulation as such is from economic causes, which Dreher and Carlson could easily blame on capitalism…and young people who _want_ to move to the Cities, which is what really sticks in conservative craws.

…and I beg to differ: there are no 'locker room tension relievers' in Heaven because 0.) that would be wrong and 1.) women in Heaven _want_ to have done to them exactly what you want to do with them, which might to the Natural Man constitute a paradox if you want to rape but the Justified Man knows just won't, as up there all tears shall be dried.

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I actually respect the relative honesty of Dreher et al in seeing Captalism as the enemy of Tradition it usually is. This is in contrast to 'The Market cannot fail us….' Panglossism and Polyannism of the 'libert'arians that either says the world can do no better, or acknowledges problems but blames them on Gummint Interference, or goes full-tilt Social Darwinist and claims the occasions of suffering are actually virtues of the system.

Traditionalists hitched-up with Free Marketeers when the State stopped enforcing their moral codes, most notably White Supremacy, Male Supremacy, and Sex Laws. (To be fair, Catholics traditionalists were of two minds about the first.)

Both they and I (maybe 'we' here, to some extent) reject Pure Capitalism because we have moral or ethical norms that it ignores or tends toward violating. We both speak of human dignity: they consider it mocked utterly when the wrong body parts voluntarily come into contact, we when people starve or suffer exposure or treatable illness or ignorance.

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Weird how these bible humpers made a cause out of a 'nothing burger' and are then surprised to see how easily they are defeated by time.

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