Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Broad Political Trends Affect Dog Ownership Rights

There are Left Wing Wackos and Right Wing Wackos.

I have described them both in this blog. Both are a threat to our right to own a dog.

In the 1940’s, the Nazi’s went from house to house and destroyed people’s guard dogs. They almost put the Dogue de Bordeaux into extinction. The rise of the far Right (Nazi’s) was a backlash against the failures of the Weimar Republic. People wanted prosperity, and they wanted law and order, of which they had neither.

Europeans have a tendency to swing to extremes in politics, which is why we have to avoid idolizing or imitating their cultures and political systems. Private property rights, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, etc. all impact your right to own a dog.

Which is why I stress you shouldn’t view the threat to your dog ownership only comes from the far Left. Today, that is the case. But, without social stability, law and order, personal liberty, and freedom for opportunity and prosperity, the public eventually tosses the Left out and goes to the far Right. And then your dog rights go away.

Here is an interesting quote, illustrating my point:

HH: What's the consequence for American of this violence?

VDH: I think it's two-fold. I think it tells us that with our own un-policed border, and ten to fifteen million illegal aliens in the United States, that we can immigrate and assimilate them much better, because of our egalitarian, populist traditions, if we get serious. And we do not want to have a MECHA, ATZLAN, La Raza culture dividing us. That's one. And two, I think it should really bring a little sobriety about Europe. We've had this nostalgia, this idea that the Europeans have transcended all of our problems. In fact, economically, militarily, politically, socially, they're in a complete mess, and I got that the last three and half weeks.

HH: Now, you're a student of European history as well as ancient history, and Le Pen was the run-off loser to Chirac in the last French presidential election. He is an arch-right winger. Some people call him a fascist. He denies that. He has been relatively quiet. He was in Cypress last week, making some comments about this. What is the totalitarian, or the fascist temptation here? Do you worry about that as well?

VDH: I do, because the history, whether we look at the unworkable Weimar to Hitler, or whether we look at the Spanish revolution to Franco, or whatever radical swing we see in Europe, there's always this...because they are so far left, and when the left proves unworkable or chaotic, then the answer is always a man on a horse. So we have to watch this very carefully, because there will come out of the shadows a French politician to say look, I'll put a lid on all this. And the same way, if you look at the legislation that's been proposed in the Netherlands, that would never stand up in our U.S. Supreme Court. So while the American people were apologizing for the Patriot Act, to their left-wing European friends, they have not a clue that the legislation a lot of European parliaments is so far to the right of anything that we could imagine, such as deporting a naturalized citizen, without a hearing, as if an Arab-American were in the United States, and somebody accused him of terrorism, they just sent him back to Egypt. We could not do that.

HH: What do you mean by man on a horse? Explain to the audience, Victor Davis Hanson.

VDH: The idea that there will be somebody who will promise them to bring order, to bring back respect, to bring back reverence for tradition, and to get the economy, to get the society back on an even keel, in the European tradition. And that'll be quite unexpected by us, because we keep thinking that they're left-wing and post-modern, but we don't read their history. When they have a great susceptability toward aristocratic order and stability. And to be honest, right-wing dictators, they seem to prop up throughout European history.

No comments: