Chronicles—far, far gone

If you are primarily motivated not by love of the true and the good, not by love of your country and civilization, but by hatred of various enemies, then you will inevitably end up allying yourself with enemies of the true and the good, of your country and civilization, so long as they share your hatreds. Thus Chronicles, edited by Thomas Fleming, has published an article by the veteran pro-Soviet, pro-Arab leftist Alexander Cockburn, a man so disreputable the Village Voice dumped him decades ago. Cockburn (pronounced Co-burn) writes about a rally in a California town at which a full-size mock guillotine was placed on the stage and used to behead in effigy America’s business leaders. In his speech at the rally he explained how the mass killings of the French Revolution were worthwhile:

Up on the platform I took the guillotine issue head on. Only 666 aristocrats in Paris had been topped versus 1,543 throughout France. The reward: decisive smack on the snout of the land-holding aristocracy; durable popular power for peasants, workers and the petit bourgeois: M. le patron and M. le proprietaire stepped into history. [LA replies: he conveniently leaves out the hundreds of thousands massacred in the Vendee.]

Here in America, the corporate class is now entirely out of control, lawless and beyond the sanction of prosecutor, juror or ballot box. If every corporate lawbreaker felt that somewhere along the line the retribution of the guillotine might await them, it would concentrate their minds marvelously and cow them into lawfulness.

I got some cheers and a charming young hippie, Brooklyn, mother of three, told me she wanted to move to France forthwith. Ellen told the executioner, Michael Evenson, to put the contraption through its paces. She invited the crowd to call out designated victims—CEOs of the major banks, billionaires of note, and Evenson would drop the blade. He hitched the blade up 6 feet and down it came with quite a satisfactory thwock.

The “conservative” Chronicles hates America’s current leadership so much it will even publish a guillotine-celebrating leftist to express that hatred.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 26, 2009 01:02 PM | Send