Four score and seven years ago (1927) Charles Lindbergh made the first nonstop solo transatlantic flight. The event overshadowed the crash of the German economy, which led to the rise of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi) to power in 1933. For a dozen years America struggled with economic depression and tried with earnest to ignore the rising tide of socialism in Germany and how corrupt its utopian dream had become.
HOLY CRAP. What's with the "four score" thing? What a tired and useless rhetorical trick. And why bring up Lindbergh at all? Is it really the case that a singular event would overshadow years of economic woe in Europe?? And why the hell are we getting yet another history lesson?!? Why do right-wingers write letters with stupid-- and always factually challenged-- history lessons designed to tell us that we are this close to Communist Russia and/or Nazi Germany??? Here is ol' Ronald Bouwman telling us that
The communists and the Nazis (national socialists) killed more innocent people than died in all the wars in all the world history that preceded them. America must recognize the potential disasters that now threaten her.Nazis and commies. All the time. And note that he-- just like Gronquist in today's letter-- includes "national socialists" to get that in there-- so basically Nazis were socialists. Except, of course, they weren't. At least, not how it is typically imagined. Indeed, from Wikipedia on the book Preussentum und Sozialismus by Oswald Spengler:
Indeed, when you read what Spengler says, it is quite interesting in how totally unlike the conventional definition of socialism (as used by right-wingers as an anti-Democratic boogeyman buzz word) it is. Indeed, it seems that the whole "socialist" aspect of the party was really just a "demagogic gambit designed to attract support from the working class."
Spengler responded to the claim that socialism's rise in Germany had not begun with the Marxist rebellions of 1918 to 1919, but rather in 1914 when Germany waged war, uniting the German nation in a national struggle that he claimed was based on socialistic Prussian characteristics, including creativity, discipline, concern for the greater good, productivity, and self-sacrifice. Spengler claimed that these socialistic Prussian qualities were present across Germany and stated that the merger of German nationalism with this form of socialism while resisting Marxist and internationalist socialism would be in the interests of Germany.
Spengler's Prussian socialism was popular amongst the German political right, especially the revolutionary right who had distanced themselves from traditional conservatism. His notions of Prussian socialism influenced Nazism and the Conservative Revolutionary movement. [Emphasis mine]
People like Dennis Gronquist, too stupid to actually know what the Nazi party was really about, just see the word "socialism" and imagine that, well, it must have been socialist. Boo!
This makes the rest of his letter quite pointless: Gronquist is worried that
We’re giving it to the labor unions, private and public, just as the Germans once did. Politicians promote hate of opposition. We’re falling for that socialist utopian dream that is doomed to fail.
Unfortunately, we aren't doing anything "just as the Germans did" because Gronquist doesn't know his history very well. A real newspaper wouldn't run letters like this. They are inaccurate, and express a view based on a totally made-up understanding of history. But the Oklahoman isn't a real newspaper and letters like this-- socialism is doomed to fail, just like it did in Nazi Germany!-- are exactly what the editors want its readers to see, even if it is factually inaccurate.
PS: Again, do the editors even do any editing? Note the headline:
"Socialist utopian dream doome to fail"
Doome? Just add a "d" for crying out loud!
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