Reality is not what sucks, but rather those who want to erase reality like Biden and Harris are trying to do.

Yeah, Leonard can be a small hurdle to a present-day mind, but usually worth it. He is one of the few that have successfully traced some of the conception and basics of collectivism back to Plato. I practically lived at the library in my childhood, and one had a veritable encyclopedia of Plato's writings. Of course given the name I devoured them. My senior year of HS my political economy teacher (it was an "advanced" class that was pretty solid - this was decades ago) asked if I had read any Plato. I informed him practically everything that was available. He said he doubted that and asked me what I thought of Plato. I said he was an overrated prick.

This kinda shocked my teacher who sat there for a moment and then said "well, perhaps you have read enough of him." >.<

What he didn't know at the time is that earlier in my education an English teach had assigned us "Anthem." After Anthem, Plato's whole notion of destroying the individual practically made him persona non grata for me. Since that and his notion of a perfect reality and what we perceive are so core to his writings, I didn't care for him or them, much.

Have you read Herf's book on Nazi propaganda ""The Jewish enemy"? It really helps demonstrate the path and the parallels, repetition, and similarity to the same self-style "progressives" and their propaganda.

I've been rereading a bunch of the older stuff - and by older I mean some of it centuries old, including by the proponents of those collectivist ideologies. It is a rough read overall, but the goal was to determine if there was something that was consistent in the terms left/right throughout history that would stand as core principles. The standard things we consider to those just don't stand up to a review of even the last several decades.

But two things do tend to be common: the Left has been always collectivist minded, while the Right was not. IMO, so far, it is the reason why the Left is always behind the draconian regimes. Collectivism demands authoritarianism because in a sense it is so brittle because it can not stand against the individual otherwise.

Oh and I forgot to mention the specific book by Howe, my apologies. It is "Socialized Germany", 1915. It is public domain now, so https://ia800909.us.archive.org/11/it... is an image scan of it I've found. I've been meaning to OCR it, but let us just say the scan quality is ... not stellar. Thus I expect it will be quite the undertaking.

Yeah, there is something about feudalism, and the difference between that and a Monarchy. One of my driving goals has to answer a question I asked myself a few years ago:

People seem to like to claim the Nazis and Fascists were, as Peterson puts it "The Right gone too far"; yet they were the Left by pretty much every indicator. So if that is not the right example, and assuming there is such a thing as "too far to the right", what would the structure of that government look like?

My top two contenders have been the "Old West" period in America, and a Monarchy, though a feudal one might be the better descriptor for the latter. I wouldn't say the Old West was "too far", but might be a genuine "far right" under the understanding that "Right" means individualist.

Oh man, I wanted to take those cruises back then. But for me and my health at the time I had to GTFO of the area I was living. I had basically become horribly allergic to something in the area after a particularly nasty bout.

I don't think the veganuts will win this battle though. It has been becoming ever more clear and the results ever more tenable. It is enough so far that I see many doctors adding the fact that they focus on dietary changes over medicine in their bio. Sure, some of them will push the vegan agenda, but the vast majority don't. Like Tom's doctor in the movie most are confronted with "wait, that ... didn't go as expected" and most doctors will at such a point become interested. Particularly the ones who went into the business genuinely to help people.

I see more and more restaurants sporting gluten-free and "animal/protein/carnivore-style" options. Some are even getting clued in about just how nasty soy is. There are now more top-end athletes, even in high endurance stuff, that are going low/slow/no carb than there are "vegan/vegetarian" ones - and outperforming them hard. It is slow, but that ship is turning. It may be another several decades, but that is one of the few areas I think are looking up.