Around the WebMike Rappaport

Here are two interesting discussions from the Web.  First, this is from the summary on Amazon of Jonah Goldberg's new book on liberal facism:

Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.

Second, this claim from Michael Barone's column:

Lesson two is that societies can more easily be transformed from the bottom up than from the top down. We persuaded the Iraqis to elect their parliament from national party lists (reportedly so that it would include more women) rather than to elect them from single-member districts that would have elected community leaders more in touch with local opinion.  But the impetus for change has come from the bottom up, from tribal sheiks in Anbar province who got tired of the violence and oppression of al Qaeda in Iraq, from Shiites and Sunnis who, once confident of the protection of American forces and of the new Iraqi military, decided to quit killing each other.

(Hat tip in both cases to Instapundit.)

Comments

[DTH]

"The Nazis . . . maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities . . ."

More akin to the Univerity of Mississippi in the 1950s, than to Harvard of today, but then maybe members of the White Citizen Council were just a bunch of liberals.

[Bob Agard]

Thanks for posting these. Both are very interesting.