Andrew Schmookler: It
does appear on the Right, because it relies upon hierarchy, going back to that
again. In order to have a Hitler or any
of these other dictators, like Mussolini, you have to have a following that's
willing to follow that sort of a thing.
And so they [Republicans] are very good at being loyal followers. Robert E. Lee, who I admire greatly, I think
he's a great human being in a great many ways, but he had some of these virtues
- which meant that even though he didn't approve of secession, and didn't have
altogether good feelings about slavery, and was a member of the United States
army when Virginia seceded - he felt that his loyalty required him to fight for
the South. That is, he showed a sense of
honor in his code, and he did it with real class. I don't like that way of choosing myself,
because I think you should follow the right instead of following the authority
of the "Us." But if you're engaged in a
war, there is something to be said for not abandoning your people.
Rob Kall: Well what
I wanted to try to get to is -- you're talking about Evil. You're talking about an "evil force," that underlying
all of this, there is a force of evil.
Andrew Schmookler: And
I'm saying - change the word to "Destructive".
I would say that there is a pattern or force that can be traced through
History; you can see how it operates, you can see the mechanisms, you can see
where it expresses itself, and you can see how, like with Rove pulling that
thing off the shelf, how it continues it's patterns on through, and it uses
it's various impacts to spread the brokenness which is inherent in the thing. You can just say it is destructive; and I say
I think we should see it as an evil spirit, because it has many of the ways of
behaving that you would impute to an evil spirit. Even though I say it as a naturalistic thing,
there is something which is moving out there which is working as if there were
a purpose to destroy.
Rob Kall: Are there
incidences where this has been counteracted, overcome, and defeated? Because it sounds like it tastes defeat. Or, maybe it's not defeat. Is there a different way to frame it than
defeat, or does defeat use the same language and way of thinking?
Andrew Schmookler: I'm
all for battling. I mean, when sometimes
you do have to fight, I'm a fan of Winston Churchill. We do have to defeat this thing, and we
defeat it, I say, by spreading the truth.
We don't have to become like them.
We have to become as bold as they, as determined to prevail as they, but
we have to be Churchill to their Hitlers, and to speak the truth and to stand
up for the things that we know are valuable to civilization, like truth, and
justice, and the ideals that our country is about. We've got to be impassioned about those
things, and fight this thing. Every one
of these issues is a manifestation of it, we could get concrete about the guns,
about climate change, about tax policy, the blatant hypocrisy /
Rob Kall: We better
wrap this up, but let me nail this down.
When I ask you "Are there examples where this has been defeated?", you
talk about Churchill defeating Hitler.
That cost tens of millions of lives, and billions of resources, it
shifted the very nature of power across the world - are you saying that the
fight that we have to fight is as big a fight as the fight against Nazism?
Andrew Schmookler: Let
me just say that in the wake of the 2012 election, that force is back on its
heels. Things have moved - since the
debacle of July and August 2011, with that terribly botched "debt ceiling"
thing, that galls me it was handed the way it was, but anyway, since then,
Obama seems to have come to some of his senses about what he's up against and
how he needs to deal with it, and he has been pushing that force back
successfully, so I think things are moving in a good direction, and they
certainly moved in a good direction in the 2012 election.
But I think that we
would be much more powerful in fighting this if we ran against that thing that
is really the source of what we need to defeat.
I think that if, once you see this thing, that's why I think it's
important to see it, once you see this destructive force that is the pattern
that all of it fits into, then every time you go after them, you go after them
in a way which will have an impact on the consciousness of the people who hear
you; whether it's your neighbor, or, in my case, as many people as I can reach
like this, this radio show, and like the speech I gave at the University of
Virginia last week, and like on the Opednews and like that.
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