Any Passing Similarity To Rush Limbaugh Here?

“These anti-democratic forces will use fear, chaos and hatred…” Chris Hedges

“At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or the possibility of totalitarianism as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard of living we had. This is the bleak future. This is reality.” 

…

“There are powerful corporate entities, fearful of losing their influence and wealth, arrayed against us.  They are waiting for a moment to strike, a national crisis that will allow them, in the name of national security and moral renewal, to take complete control. The tools are in place. These antidemocratic forces, which will seek to make an alliance with the Christian Right and other extremists, will use fear, chaos, the hatred for the ruling elites, and the specter of left-wing dissent and terrorism to impose draconian controls to extinguish our democracy. And while they do it, they will be waving the American flag, chanting patriotic slogans, promising law and order, and clutching the Christian cross. By then, exhausted and broken, we may have lost the power to resist.” Pp 189

Hedges, Christopher: Empire Of Illusion (New York: Nation Books 2009) pp 145, pp 189

“Hateful, Rude or Ignorant Remarks Are The Music Of A Free Society…” Daniel Gilbert

“We live in a world in which people are censured, demoted, imprisoned, beheaded, simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. Tough shit. That’s the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we’re in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it’s time to make a run for the fence.

Daniel Gilbert. In The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007. Dave Eggers (Ed.) Houghton Mifflin, New York: 2007. pp129-30.

“HOW SHOULD WE JUDGE THE POTPOURRI OF XENOPHOBIC, RACIST, AND HYPERNATIONALIST MOVEMENTS NOW IN THE NEWS?” William Brustein

“Could another racist, xenophobic party come to power today? The logic of the argument presented here leads me to answer yes: evil may be the horrifying outcome of rational politics. If average Germans had known in 1932 what they new in 1945 about the consequences, of Nazism, the Nazi Party would never have attracted a mass following. The Nazi Party skillfully cloaked its aims until it had achieved power. Many present and future demagogues may similarly masque their message of hate. It is unlikely that we can always detect evil before it reveals itself. How should we judge the potpourri of xenophobic, racist, and hypernationalist movements and parties that are now in the news?”

William Brustein, The Social Origins Of The Nazi Party, 1925-1933 (Yale University: New Haven 1996) pp 182

“Pity Is A Rebel Passion.” Gilbert Murray

“Pity is a rebel passion. Its hand is against the strong, against the organised forces of society, against conventional sanctions and accepted Gods. It is the Kingdom of Heaven within us fighting against the brute powers of the world; and it is apt to have those qualities of unreason, of contempt for the counting of costs and the balancing of sacrifices, of recklessness, and even, in the last resort, of ruthlessness, which so often mark the paths of heavenly things and the doings of the children of light. It brings not peace, but a sword.”

Gilbert Murray. From The Introduction: The Trojan Women Of Euripedes. Gilbert Murray, Translator and Editor. New York: Oxford 1915.

Susan Jacoby, Quoting Lyman Beecher:

“Beecher declared that men “who have been cast down from affluence to poverty should not grunt and grumble, but bear matters unflinchingly. They should never forget that they are men, even though they die of hunger. An Indian, uncivilized though he was, never flinched when fire was applied to his body. The manly way to meet misfortune is to go down boldly to poverty.” “(Lyman Beecher was Minister of the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn. He was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s father.)

Cited in Susan Jacoby: The Age of American Unreason. Random House: New York, 2008. pp. 73.