How fashionable it is to admire monsters
I left the following comment on Digg in regard to this story about the Anita Dunn / Mao controversy.
Share ThisDisclaimer: I’m not a fan of Beck or McCain. As a matter of fact, I hate them.
HOWEVER…
It’s incorrect to state that the objection is that Dunn merely “quoted” Mao. The issue is that she referred to Mao as one of her two favorite “political philosophers”.
Now, there might be any of several reasons to quote Mao. Among other things, his thoughts on the technical aspects of guerilla warfare make his thought on that topic something that is relevant to study by military officers (for sake of the lessons of military science that can thereby be learned and reapplied).
But it’s a wholly different thing for a high government official to express admiration for Mao’s *political philosophy*, just as surely as it would be a horror for a high government official to express admiration for Hitler’s political philosophy.
Not merely quote. Not merely study. Not merely admire his technical proficiency as a military commander.
No, this isn’t some innocent little thing like that, and it is fundamentally dishonest to attempt to characterize it that way.
Dunn expressed admiration for a “philosophy” of wholesale butchery with a resulting body count ten times what Hitler produced. The twentieth century was a historically unprecedented tsunami of innocent blood shed by governments. Mao, more than any other person who ever lived, was perhaps the single largest contributor to that hemoclysm.
Mao was a monster. His crimes exceed even the Holocaust.
There is at least one person in the White House who, by their own admission, openly admires monsters.
This is NOT a small thing. What’s WRONG with you that you feel compelled to make excuses for her and try to minimize this?
Actually, Hitler had a great monetary policy. He kicked the banksters out of Germany and seized control of the monetary system. That’s one of the main reasons that Germany went from economically crippled to an economic powerhouse in just a few years.
[facepalm]