The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Carl Salonen & the Left-Wing Trolls Who Smeared ‘Advice Goddess’ Amy Alkon

Posted on | April 26, 2011 | 10 Comments

Yesterday I blogged about Amy Alkon’s encounter with the online Left which, taking offense at something Alkon had written about unwed motherhood, organized one of its characteristic “Two-Minute Hate” campaigns against her.

What I did not know was that the Left attempted to destroy Alkon’s career as a journalist, by posting defamatory fallacious Amazon “reviews” of her book I See Rude People.

Nor did I know that Alkon had named Carl Salonen and Loretta Serrano as key perpetrators of that smear campaign.

Donald Douglas has an excellent post summarizing this shocking story, of which I was previously unaware. And this is the kind of vicious behavior in which self-proclaimed “progressives” now engage routinely. These destructive tactics are the radical offspring of what Frankfurt School intellectual Herbert Marcuse advocated in his notorious 1965 essay “Repressive Tolerance”:

Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.

Elsewhere in the same essay, Marcuse denounces “pure” or “non-partisan” tolerance, which he describes as the “active, official tolerance granted to the Right as well as to the Left, to movements of aggression as well as to movements of peace, to the party of hate as well as to that of humanity.” Is anyone so blind or so ignorant of history as to miss the significance of this? Marcuse identified the Right as “movements of aggression” and “the party of hate,” whereas the Left he identified with “peace” and “humanity.” And he wrote that in 1965.

Marcuse was writing at a time when the United States was locked in mortal combat against Soviet imperialism, fighting against the most murderous idea in all human history. Marcuse was writing in the immediate aftermath of the 1964 Goldwater campaign, at a time when among Americans it was the Right which demanded resistance to Communist tyranny as the only hope of preventing the extermination of liberty in the world, at a time when the Left advocated “co-existence” with that totalitarian evil.

It was, as Ronald Reagan famously said, “A Time for Choosing.”

Marcuse’s demand for suppression of the anti-communist Right, at that key moment in history, highlights a fact that everyone should understand about the origins of our 21st-century Left: During the Cold War, when America was engaged in what JFK called the “long twilight struggle” against communism, they were on the other side.

That the Left’s cultural ambitions now extend so far that Carl Salonen and his merry band of online character assassins would attempt the destruction of Amy Alkon — a mere syndicated advice columnist, who writes about etiquette and relationships, etc. — demonstrates the enduring totalitarian spirit of the Left.

You had better speak out against the Left’s thuggery now, because if hatemongers like Carl Salonen and Loretta Serrano ever get their way, you won’t be able to speak out in the future.

Bookmark and Share

Comments

  • Anonymous

    I share in Amy Alkon’s experiences, unfortunately. One person from among the Right asserted himself on my behalf but otherwise, silence, the smearing and destructive hatred went unchallenged.

    The Left, the “Liberal mind” today, isn’t only “being human” but is functioning in real warfare against everyone else: they do not hesitate to literally and figuratively destroy those they target. And those they target are those of us who are not among their socio-political movement.

  • Anonymous

    I share in Amy Alkon’s experiences, unfortunately. One person from among the Right asserted himself on my behalf but otherwise, silence, the smearing and destructive hatred went unchallenged.

    The Left, the “Liberal mind” today, isn’t only “being human” but is functioning in real warfare against everyone else: they do not hesitate to literally and figuratively destroy those they target. And those they target are those of us who are not among their socio-political movement.

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    This justifies my stance against playing nice with these clowns. All of these people whining about how we need to stay upbeat and positive, and not lower ourselves by adopting the left’s tactics, etc., etc., ad nauseum, plainly don’t know what they’re talking about. To start out with, we should boycott any labor produced product. “Look For The Union Label-Then Buy Chinese”. We’ve got to stop worrying about playing nice, or what it will look like if we don’t. The hell with them all.

  • Pingback: ‘When You Give in to Thuggery’ : The Other McCain

  • Anonymous

    I do not think that conservatives should emulate the Left’s appeals to ignorance and their habit of fomenting blind hatred. An opposition can be bold and determined without resorting to that kind of hateful crudeness.

    On the other hand, the Culture of Niceness — which demands that conservatives always speak in “respectable” terms, on penalty of being purged — is a real impediment to fighting the Left. You see this, for example, when Respectable Republican types attempt to exclude Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, et al., as movement spokesmen on the grounds that they are guilty of “incivility.”

    It is one thing to discourage rhetorical excess. It is something else entirely to use accusations of rhetorical excess as an excuse to throw somebody under the bus — especially when the intended victims are far more effective spokesmen than the people who criticize them.

  • http://twitter.com/AmPowerBlog Donald Douglas

    I’ll have more on this, a picture of Salonen, etc. Thanks for the link.

  • http://thepagantemple.blogspot.com/ ThePaganTemple

    I’m not saying we should take to the streets, riot, physically assault people, abuse children, engage in property destruction, and all the other things the left does. I’m just saying we should be forceful. When we are attacked, we should defend ourselves, both physically and verbally. I don’t want to hurt anybody, for practical reasons. But if they are going to persist with their terroristic threatening, and their physical and verbal abuse, then they need their asses kicked, literally and figuratively.

    Also, we need to stop cringing in fear whenever we get called racist, homophobic, sexist, bigoted, xenophobic, etc. Instead of cringing, get back in their faces. For example, more people need to get turned on to how the Democrats are actually the party that promoted slavery for so long, and Jim Crow, and draw a correlation to Democrat policies today and how they are basically a scheme to keep blacks mollified and in line. Not enough people talk about this in the media, including Fox.

    As far as I’m concerned, Barak Obama is nothing more or less than the White House Lawn Jockey-In-Chief of the Democratic Party. Naturally, when you say something like that, you will be accused of racial insensitivity. That’s what happened to me anyway. Why? Because the left is skilled at turned your attacks around and getting in your face. All I’m saying is, we need to stand our ground, not let them back us into a corner, and not let them define us.

    When I say what I said about Obama, I am defining them, because when you stop to think about, what else is be other than their political lawn jockey? Just another straw boss keeping the slaves in line for the Democrat Massahs.

  • Pingback: » Quote Of The Day: Well, Shut My Mouth Edition

  • http://www.redstateeclectic.typepad.com AngelaTC

    This is what they do, and this is why they get so much attention. They swarm on a moments notice, and the internet makes that even easier.

    (Amazon could stop the bad reviews by limiting the review privilege to only customers who had actually purchased the book. )

  • http://thecampofthesaints.org Bob Belvedere

    The Culture of Niceness is nothing more than a front group for The Culture Of Death. Taking advantage of our humanity, the Left seeks to render us impotent, unable to mount a strong offense, forever on the defensive and cowering in our civility.

    We need fighters – people willing to take the battle to the enemy relentlessly.

    We will maintain our humanity, if we maintain our belief in The Golden Rule.

    We’ve got to learn that right is on our side – that we possess a fuel that the Left does not: we are moral beings imbued with Right Reason. Some of us even have the added benefit of knowing that a Loving God is with us as we battle the Leftist Evil.

    WOLVERINES!

Performance Optimization WordPress Plugins by W3 EDGE