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On the fifth anniversary of FredHJr’s death — 46 Comments

  1. Fred was great…
    One of the few people i could discuss things as he had a lot of historical knowlege and so, the time was on point not on establishing the facts..

    i miss him
    and i miss him more now that my dad died..
    and everyone is gone…

  2. Ephesians 6:12

    For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

    I’m halfway through reading Whittaker Chambers’ Witness, and he was a soul brother to Fred and went on much the same pilgrim’s progress, also to Christianity, when he left the Left (or as Chambers put it, “when I broke with Communism”).

    “Having been converted first to Communism and then from it, Chambers knew that Communism’s fundamental strength lay in its spiritual dimension.” http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/He-heard-the-screams-6427

  3. shoot, sorry for all those italics

    but check out the New Criterion review: fascinating look at another “changer”

  4. From that review, this is marvelous:

    ‘Chambers saw that two faiths, Communism and Freedom, are at war. By “freedom” he meant not the license to indulge one’s desires, but the choice to act from one’s infinitely valuable human soul. There is no way to get the concept of the soul as sacred, of the human being as more than a means to some greater end, from materialism.

    ‘Real freedom, according to Chambers, “is only a political reading of the Bible. Religion and freedom are indivisible. Without freedom the soul dies. Without the soul there is no justification for freedom.”

    ‘Once recognized for what it is, Communism transforms its most serious opponents into believers, if not in God then at least in something transcendent and outside the chain of cause and effect.’

  5. Great summary, Neo. It is easy to see why you miss him.

    One phrase resonated in particular from the posts you quoted: “social Marxists”.

    I think that is a very prescient description of so many U.S., and even European, Leftists. I mean that in two ways. First, they just like the “idea” of Marxism; it is so intellectual, or at least trendy in certain circles. Which leads to the second point. In fashionable circles of Academia, and the Media, it is just where you need to be to be accepted.

    There are, of course others, notably politicians and bureaucrats, who just want to grow government; and Marxist principles provide cover for that.

    FredHjr brought, and you and other self-identified “Changers” still bring, a valuable perspective; one I that is a bit different from my own. I was a Redneck kid, who never wanted to be anything other than what I became–a Naval Aviator. So, my world view was locked in early. It tended to go where Ike led.

    You have attracted an eclectic group of participants to your forum.

  6. Oh, excuse me. I mistakenly used the phrase “Social Marxist” when I should have written “cultural Marxist”.

    The memory lapse and use of the incorrect word does not change my intent. “Cultural Marxist” more aptly defines the folks i had in mind.

    I would plead senior moment; but, in fact innate carelessness was displayed by refreshing my memory regarding what I intended to quote.

  7. Now senior moment comes into play, or is it just more innate carelessness? I really meant, “not refreshing my memory”.

    I give up for now.

  8. FredHjr was an exceptional poster, by any standard.

    I always made it a point to read his material.

    I’d have to enter re-education classes should I wish to bring my stuff up to snuff.

    Such are my limitations.

    %%%

    I took particular interest in his parsing of practicing ‘American’ Marxism.

    &&&

    As for Marxists in academe… they seem to have been a fixture ever since the late sixties.

    Since the (economic) collapse of the USSR and Red China’s abandonment of Marxist economics every Western university has to have a Marxist economics professor. (!) Or so it seems.

    Or as JohnPaul II quipped: ‘The last person on Earth to believe in Marxism will be a Catholic nun.” Such a prayer!

  9. Wonderful tribute to a man of integrity.And “Witness” is one of the best books I have ever read.

  10. I guess I missed FredHJr. I recall reading this blog at times around 2004-5 or so, maybe earlier, then only occasionally for a long time, and I think only became a pretty-much-daily reader sometime since he died. But I would really like to know more of his story. It would be interesting to hear a Chambers- or Horowitz-style story from one more recently on the left–the serious left, not just liberalism. RIP.

    Commenter strcpy is/was undoubtedly a C programmer.

  11. FredHJr really had Obama’s number, as well as the rest of the swarm that has crawled from the hive. I don’t understand what we’re dealing with as clearly as he did, but I share his dismay and feeling of doom.

    Neo, do you know what became of Occam’s beard? I miss him as well.

  12. FredHjr has been gone five years. Time flies.

    Your reposts of his comments made me realize that those of us who have been long time neo-neocon readers have known about Obama from the beginning. FredHjr painted a portrait of Obama that is, after the passage of years, still a perfect likeness. RIP Fred, you did all you could to warn your fellow citizens.

  13. I didn’t realize that Fred was only in his mid-fifties. From his historical perspective and knowledge I had assumed he was at least as old as I am.

    A very good tribute neo and Fred is sorely missed.

  14. Neo, this is a beautiful tribute to your friend and commenter, Fred.

    Rest well, Fred.

    Thank you for everything, Neo

  15. Remarkable insights, as the prescience of his comments attest.

    Here’s a quote that I saved by FredHJr;
    “I get the sense that government run health care is going to happen. There just are not enough votes to defeat it. That’s the bottom line. And the people who are ramming this through do not care how this is going to impact providers or patients. Their goal is to dismantle capitalism, one brick at a time, and for them to become the new nomenklatura in a social democratic state.” FredHJr. ”

    I’m struck by the similarities in viewpoint with another insightful conservative and perhaps not coincidentally, another former leftist radical, David Horowitz

    David Horowitz: How Republicans can win

    “Democrats regard politics as a war conducted by other means. Their agenda is not to seek compromise over practical solutions to complex problems.

    It is to achieve power to dictate the fundamental transformation of American society into a socialist-redistributionist state.

    Democrats regard Republicans as enemies standing in the way of social justice and social progress. Every issue for them is a means to a greater end, which first of all is power, and beyond that the transformation of American society into a socialist-redistributionist state.

    my emphasis

    note: IMO, neither FredHJr or Horowitz are referring to the “useful idiot” LIVs. They are referring to Marxist activist democrat/’progressives’.

  16. [i]Mac Says:
    June 26th, 2014 at 4:56 pm

    Commenter strcpy is/was undoubtedly a C programmer.

    Thanks for that. I was going to mention that I always wondered about his/her nick.

    RIP, Fred. He was also a regular at Belmont Club. I think Wretchard mentioned that he had heard a rumor about Fred’s death, and I linked neo’s post about it.

  17. These comments remind me how little I’ve accomplished in trying to get friends and family to see the danger.

    Have any of you other “changers” had any success in getting your fellow Americans to wake up to assault on our liberties and Constitutional government?

    The use of children and unknown others to attack our border is so outrageous, and yet no one that I know seems to care. Please report if you have had any successes at all. Thank you.

  18. Promethea:

    Every now and then I try to talk to someone, but the response is basically a shoulder shrug. That is so discouraging that I’ve backed off for a while.

    I did talk to someone a week or two ago, someone who doesn’t really follow politics much. I told them a few things and they seemed a bit concerned. But I don’t know how deep the concern went.

    The problem is that you really have to follow things and understand them to be outraged enough. Most people either don’t understand what’s happening because they don’t understand how our government traditionally works (checks and balances, etc.), or they get a glimmer that something’s wrong, but it’s too threatening to their belief system (“Obama and Democrats good; Republicans bad”) and so they brush it away, rationalize it away, or put it out of their minds. It is profoundly disturbing to realize what’s happening, and people don’t want to face it.

    Obama relies on that.

    Some people are leftists and get what’s happening and are happy about it. Others are just happy if they get their government money and benefits. And still others are just not paying attention, and don’t want to know anything disturbing anyway.

  19. neo-neocon . . .

    Thanks for your answer. I love your blog. Without it, Belmont Club, Ace of Spades, and Instapundit, I would have plunged into despair 10 years ago.

    I guess we’re just part of history, watching the fall of our nation but unable to do much of anything about it. I do what I can, and I am so grateful that you keep this wonderful blog going so we can talk about things.

    I basically have only one thing to say, over and over, which is that I still haven’t really accepted the fact that my friends and family–some of whom are very intelligent and/or talented–are really and truly stupid. When things get tough, they and I will be crushed under the boot heel of vicious brutes and tyrants.

    On my to-do list is to read the Bible carefully. I will probably understand it much better now than I did when I went to Sunday School.

  20. Thanks for the reminder on Fred Neo, Occums beard seems to have disappeared also.

  21. Promethea:

    You’re welcome.

    I wish I could do more, but right now it’s chronicling and watching. And voting, for what that’s worth, and supporting certain candidates. Meanwhile, things seem to spin out of control.

    It is very hard to accept that those we love can’t see what’s happening. It is puzzling, too. Something about human nature that I don’t understand.

  22. Lisa M; Darrell:

    Yes, Occam’s Beard, too. I wrote an email to him last fall, and another in January, inquiring as to whether he was okay. I didn’t get an answer, although the email did not bounce back to me. It is not a good sign.

  23. This is a beautiful tribute to your blog friend and a great introduction to him for us new posters. You are a special Lady and so is your blog.

    With regard to talking with our fellow Americans, I’ve successfully scared my wife to the point she thinks our health will be compromised with the steady diet of stress. My married daughter and her deputy husband both think I’m way overboard with my reaction to these incessant assaults on our liberty and the trampling of the Constitution.

    My friends all share the same hatred of the socialists who would transform our forefathers’ country. We’ve condensed our argument to reduce both stress and time spent in discussion. The condensed philosophy fits neatly on a bumper sticker: You’re either shootin’ or reloadin’!

    Tinkering around the margins won’t fix the progs in the media, the federal bureaucracy, the academics and the Dimocrat party – all of whom are aligned against us. How could there be any sane and reasonable person today that would be in favor of what this president has done? Yet there are millions that do. Doesn’t that make them unreasonable and not sane?

  24. I came late to this blog, and the rest of the http world; so I missed Fred’s comments, and can not sincerely offer condolences, but if neo and others remember him with respect and fondness he must have been one hell of guy. Like first q gdp that is my -2.9 cents.

  25. Here is a sign of the times.

    The Obama regime is looking at housing a metric tonne of the illegal alien children it imported in the Grumman Corporation’s old facility in Bethpage, Long Island.

    That’s where we built the Lunar Landing Module, the Eagle. As in, “Tranquillity Base here; the Eagle has landed.”

    Now the Leftists have shot the great bird in the head and are stripping him of his feathers, throwing the nude carcass our in the road for the traffic to run over.

  26. parker:

    If anything, neo is understating his contributions. He was a truly invaluable commenter. As an ex-Marxist, he was really able to get inside their heads.

    Nothing that has happened in the last five years would have surprised him. Nothing.

  27. rickl,

    Although I am not an ex-marxist, I will admit to being caught off guard to the extent bho & the Msm will push their agenda.Color me stupid. My saving grace is 5k plus 8mm reloads and the ability to make head shots at 400 yards with open sights. Using my scoped Mauser I am good to go at 1,000. All they can do is kill you; and once you accept the fact that they want to kill you, you realize they will slaughter all who you care for. Nothing left to lose. Fuck ’em and their families. If/when it comes down to dust there will be no quarter given.

    However, I still want to defeat them at the ballot box… as slim as that may be.

  28. I left a link to this post at Belmont Club, and stumbled straight into another classic Wretchard post.

    What Do You Mean We, Kemo Sabe?

    Good Lord. We can’t even see “screwed” from here.

    And don’t miss Subotai Bahadur, as usual.

  29. It’s nice to think that the jottings on blogs around the world actually get read and remembered, that personal connections are made and insights are shared. I rarely feel like internet threads are for the ages. Credit to Neo for caring.

  30. My impression of the state of things among people who are not strongly left or right is that any very harsh criticism of Obama is written off as the noise of the lunatic fringe. Which of course goes double for impeachment talk. Some of the credit for that goes to the liberal media. Well, a lot of it probably. But some of it does go to the more hysterical voices on the right–the ones who have been saying from day one that he’s part of a Muslim conspiracy to implement sharia, while simultaneously being part of a Communist conspiracy.

    The left doesn’t suffer when people on their side say nutty things, but the right does. If some obscure Tea Party spokesman says something outrageous, it’s taken to mean that everyone right of center is of the same mind. At least to that extent the media still “shape the narrative.”

  31. 21 The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, and a man is valued by what others say of him. – Proverbs

  32. I was never involved in leftism in an ideological or philosophical way. I was more taken in by the feel good goals until I started realizing that the programs didn’t make things any better. But I did try to get some real life experiences that bolstered my misgivings. It was people like Fred and Neo and Occam’s that helped me deepen my insight into the real depravity of the left. For that I am very grateful. Fred does live on a bit in all of us.

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  34. “These comments remind me how little I’ve accomplished in trying to get friends and family to see the danger.”

    Why is it your responsibility to do so, Prometheia? One should not shoulder the weight of everybody else’s problems. Especially since 68% of people in the world Obey Evil as readily as they Obey Good. One cannot and should not shoulder their guilt, and their sins.

    “The use of children and unknown others to attack our border is so outrageous, and yet no one that I know seems to care. ”

    The guilty will receive their just rewards, no better and no worse. It is not the duty of the state or anybody else to change that, unless they wish to change the world (whether as Faust or a Hero).

    “That is so discouraging that I’ve backed off for a while.”

    Seeing the mass totality of “human free will” at work, or rather not at work, is always discouraging and warranting of hatred of humanity as a whole.

    Communism makes religious fanatics that believe in changing the world, to remake it into a utopia given human flaws.

    The Ancient Sages, warrior-philosophers, old era martial artists believed in changing themselves, even if that meant shunning, ignoring, or hating humanity. What was important are not humanity’s flaws, those should either be punished or ignored, but humanity’s exceptions. Such as exceptional individuals. It is not up to other people to create exceptional individuals. It is up to the individuals themselves to proclaim their Will over the masses, and to depart from the crab bucket of humanity.

    “Without it, Belmont Club, Ace of Spades, and Instapundit, I would have plunged into despair 10 years ago.”

    Guess what I was doing to resolve just that very issue in the years after 2007 and 08. Something I picked up from lethal force applications using up close and personal hand to hand range, is that it takes an Exceptional amount of Will power. Only later did I realize that the reason why this level of power was needed, was because society itself has hard coded basic conditioning and limitations upon humans, depending on the human and the society of course. The ability to fight the US Regime, refuse to Obey Evil, and the ability to “pull the trigger” on evil, all require one thing: Willpower. For the same reason as I found.

    “Although I am not an ex-marxist, I will admit to being caught off guard to the extent bho & the Msm will push their agenda.Color me stupid.”

    It is merely an issue of training, parker. One must be trained in lethal force hand fighting ranges, otherwise you can be “surprised” a lot by a lot of things you’ve never thought about. The only difference between an ex Marxist and a current day cannonfodder is thought, will, and education. The ex Marxist knew enough of the Left’s offensive arsenal to truly comprehend the Left’s power, its True Power, not its advertised “election” socialism. Thus they saw things in pro active terms, such as thinking “how would I crash the US economy if I had the Left’s power”. They didn’t think reactively such as “how could this happen to the US, whenever an October surprise occurs”.

    Fred had a few years head start on me at the time of 2007, but over the years my favorite refrain for post 2008 was “you ain’t seen nothing yet”. I never clarified what that meant, because I counted on the Left to “convince” people. And they have done as good a job at that as they do at promoting Hollywood rapists and border rape gangs, as anything else they have done in the ATF/IRS field.

    “I rarely feel like internet threads are for the ages.”

    The NSA thinks they are for the ages, because they make it so. Always remember that. They are always Watching.

    “The left doesn’t suffer when people on their side say nutty things, but the right does.”

    It’s a religious thing. The religion doesn’t see their dogma as nutty, but they do see pagan beliefs as being crazy and heretical. The Left is a religion, they are not atheists. Another fundamental thing people had to realize “first” before they are unsurpised by the Left.

  35. Sometimes I think that with Obonga’s ascendancy we are reaping divine retribution, being given over to our worst impulses

    In reply to what Fred wrote in the distant past, that is true.

    But American guilt goes a lot longer than Bush II or Bush I. Betrayal at Bay of Pigs. Betrayal of Rhodesia, South Africa, Shah of Iran. Betrayal of Diem. Betrayal of the Republic of Vietnam. Now betrayal of Iraqis, Kurds, Shia, (twice now) Iranian freedom rioters, Egyptians, Libyans, etc. Promises that were never meant to be endured by a US Regime.

    All of this, all of these chickens, will come home one way or another. Another way of saying, what goes up, must come down. If your leader is a weakling pitcher like Hussein, at least.

    Divine retribution, if it exists, will be based on a lot more than some elections concerning Bush II. A reset button isn’t a bad way to start the Zombie Apocalypse, though, if you ask me.

    ***

    In reading my comments at the Neo links above, I noticed that I often wrote stuff that were intentionally ambiguous. Why? Because They were Watching. But if you think like parker, you might be able to decipher what I was really thinking at the time.

    http://neoneocon.com/2008/11/17/airing-ayers/#comment-93193

    I also started talking in one thread or another at the time, about the 2nd Amendment guaranteeing the First Amendment. That seemed slightly off topic at the time during that thread. Neo was talking about the effect of the Left’s propaganda and character assassination vs Joe the Plumber, if I recall. In the case of the IRS and ATF storming your house, obviously you may have the “right” to utilize the 2nd Amendment but not a lot of people are “crazy” enough to actually pull a Nevada Ranch Call to Arms.

  36. FYI: strcpy said in a comment that his name was Brian Luethke. There is a Brian Luethke from Knoxville listed as passing away in June, 2011

  37. The man was genius. I didn’t realize it reading his comments at the time. Wow

    Thank you Neo for that trip down memory lane.

  38. Neo–Thanks for the reminder of FredHJr’s articulate warnings. And thanks for making your blog so personal and family-like.

    Promethea wrote above,

    I basically have only one thing to say, over and over, which is that I still haven’t really accepted the fact that my friends and family—some of whom are very intelligent and/or talented—are really and truly stupid.

    Promethea echoes FredHJr and others, too, and Premethea’s comment itsef needs to be repeated (which is why I set it out in bold-faced font).

  39. Like many here, I have been in mourning and anguish for our country for some time now. As others have pointed out, there is a spiritual battle going on…this goes beyond flesh and blood. Just look at how otherwise functioning adults cannot see what is going on. Today, our church held its annual 4 Th of July celebration with patriotic music. The pastor seemed resigned to the fact that it was likely going to get worse…unless of course there is real repentance in this nation. He mentioned we are reaping what we have sown as a nation. One thing that has helped me keep my sanity-fragile as it is at this time-is the outreach I help with in one of the local foster homes and one of the low income apartments. Taking the message of the gospel to kids who have often not heard much before-who have been raised very secular in some cases. What was once common knowledge in this nation is being lost . You and I likely cannot save the nation, but there are kids that can be taught. We can be a light in our own little corner of the nation.

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