That ol' Nazi label

[Narrow Back]

I thought this would be a good topic heading for this.

I remember sitting between Lemire and BCL in Toronto at the last Lemire hearing. Both seemed like restless, troubled men to me. In my peripheral vision I could see Fromm. He appeared upset not to be at Marc's ear. I am sure he wondered who I was. It was quite a day.

A side note. I am convinced Fromm is a fake, like Bristow. Just sayin...

That ol' Nazi label
By Dr.Dawg on April 5, 2012 3:07 PM | 14 Comments and 1 Reaction


It’s just never appropriate, is it?

Let’s take the two Canadian “free speech advocates” pictured above, Marc Lemire and Paul Fromm, as a case in point.

I may have spoken too quickly about these gentlemen. But the kindly white folks over at Free Dominion have turned me around.

Look, we’ve been exposed for days now to the intriguing use of the word “racist” being bandied about by the Right in reference to the Trayvon Martin case.

Apparently it’s “racist” to speak out against all-pervasive presence of racism in American society. It’s “racist” to want justice for a kid stalked and killed by a white vigilante. It’s “racist” to cover the Martin case if you’re a person of colour—the crime, it would seem, of broadcasting while Black. It’s “racist” to reach out to the bereaved Martin family, as one human being to another. It’s “racist” to note the almost unanimous right-wing view that Martin was the guilty one, a typical (insert racist stereotypes and slurs here—this one’s inventive).

The word “racist,” in other words, has been appropriated by those we’ve been calling racists ourselves, as an insult for progressives. It’s white hoods vs. Black hoodies, with the racists in the latter corner. So we racists will have to think up a new, printable signifier for the braying members of the ex post facto lynch mob presently busy trying to assassinate Trayvon Martin’s character.

In the meantime, I’m determined to be post-racial today, so I thought I’d take a look at that other n-word, without incurring the wrath of Godwin—but just to show once again how words can get all bent out of shape.

Nazis? The two fellows I mentioned above are just crusaders for free speech. The fact that they post on a site like Stormfront makes no never-mind. Fox News, after all, is supportive of Stormfront—heck, some of its staffers are even members.

It’s all good mainstream stuff.

As I said, I’ve been unkind enough to have a go at these guys in the past, using the n-word and all. But here are the counter-arguments, and mark them well, as I have.

Marc Lemire posts on Stormfront, but so what? “White power” boards had all the good information long before Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn. And Lemire never said anything explicitly racist on that “white power” site. Besides, Stormfront really isn’t all that bad, you know?

Maybe Lemire was guilty of a few youthful indiscretions, but he hasn’t put a foot wrong for years. He was certainly never the head of it. OK, even if he was, the Heritage Front wasn’t Nazi anyway.

(Whoops. Oh, well, there’s no doubt a good explanation.)

Swastikas? Hey, they’re just an East Indian goodluck charm!

As for Paul Fromm, nothing wrong with him either says a Free Dominion regular.

He certainly attends all the good parties:



This latest, from Gawker magazine, on the occasion of a sparsely attended meeting of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, is a keeper:

Next up was Paul Fromm, a red-faced Canadian anti-immigration crusader and straight up crazy motherfucker. Oh, he had a nice sort of aw-shucks speaking style that, along with his pleasant Canadian accent, gave him the air of a slightly frazzled professor. But he was perhaps the most extreme extremist of the entire weekend.

“When I go to the Wal-Mart I don’t see a group of young Negroes with backward hats on looking to lift somebody’s wallet,” he said, in praise of the charms of Harrison’s non-diversity. “When I took a brief stroll from my hotel, you didn’t have some 13-year-old negress trying to sell herself to me….We are being ethnically cleansed from the cities of America!” he thundered. “I don’t know if it was the Hutus cleansing the Tutsis, or the Tutsis cleansing the Hutus. Well, they should all be cleansed.”

At this point one can almost imagine the ghost of A.H. himself waxing indignant: “‘Nazi?’ Come on! I was just a good German nationalist who had problems with the multi-cult and, ah, ethnic special interest groups. I was a militant pro-family patriot, dammit, and I built the German economy. And the autobahn! Enough with the namecalling, already!”

OK, OK, I give up! I’ll try not to call these people “Nazis” any more, and certainly not “racists,” heaven forbid. What’s in a name? The Fourniers have convinced me: the word “conservative” will do very nicely after all. Which, on reflection, is all that I’ve really been saying all along.

UPDATE: Check this out for a somewhat different take on Lemire. Dawg’s Blawg is nothing if not fair and balanced.

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Peter 1
What is it about these people that leads them to keep gathering together to give one another awards and to stage weekend getaways for the public that only they attend? You should start something similar, Dr. Dawg. Gloatessa gives an award to thwap, thwap gives an award to sooey, sooey gives an award to plg....

Like Reply
Yesterday 04:01 PM 2 Likes

sooey
Yes! Now if only I had a Fair Trading Post within biking distance I could buy a hemp gown to wear to the awards ceremony.

Like Reply
Yesterday 04:37 PM in reply to Peter 1 2 Likes

Peter 1
Organic make-up will do just fine, sooey. Not that you need it, of course.

Like Reply
Yesterday 05:03 PM in reply to sooey

grounsel
I guess you are not reading the right American blogs Herr Doctor. When you only read those that confirm your bias and then get hysterical when you happen upon one that offends your point of view, it is called naivety, not rigorous intellectual inquiry. Typical Canadian complacency. It is so boring.

Like Reply
Yesterday 04:17 PM 1 Like

Peter 1
Nope, Dr Dawg sings with the angels on this one. I do appreciate that Fromm looks like the quintessential first-year English Lit prof and Lemire resembles a pudgy mailroom clerk who can't wait to attack the box lunch mumsy made him, but they are actually quite nasty pieces of work.

Like Reply
Yesterday 04:45 PM in reply to grounsel 5 Likes

Lenny
What? They look to me like prime specimens of the master race.
If one of them was a woman you'd have your foundational breeding pair right there.

Like Reply
Today 03:10 AM in reply to Peter 1 1 Like

abdar nitangae
OT, I know, but speaking of East Indian good luck charms, I think it is something of a shame that the various versions of the swastika in Buddhist and Hindu Asia (they only look similar to the Nazi version, and are quite easy to distinguish) are not more widely seen in Canada. My reasons are:

A) There are used completely unself-consciously, so there is no question of bad-faith as you mention with the Stormfront crowd, nor are Hindu and Buddhist users of the symbol generally even thinking of Naziism at all when they use the symbol.

B) They look different enough to not be confused by people who have seen both versions.

C) They look similar enough that the existence of numerous houses of worship (attended by the immigrant other and the hated lefty Vegan crowd) with the swastika symbol on it would steal the Neo-Nazi thunder.

D) By the way, the symbol goes beyond a mere good-luck charm; it is quite important actually.

Like Reply
Yesterday 05:54 PM 1 Like

Peter 1
" the symbol ( the swastika) goes beyond a mere good-luck charm; it is quite important actually."

Yeah, I think we got that.

Like Reply
Yesterday 06:01 PM in reply to abdar nitangae 2 Likes

abdar nitangae
I mean it is absolutely everywhere in Buddhst contexts in South Korea. Almost on the level of the cross in Christianity.

Like Reply
Yesterday 06:09 PM in reply to Peter 1 1 Like

knygathin_zhaum
Indeed. Bit of trivia: which "good guy " country had swastikas on its aircraft during WW2?

Like Reply
Yesterday 09:03 PM in reply to abdar nitangae 1 Like

Dr. Dawg
The US, I think, but it reflected "kills."

Like Reply
Yesterday 09:08 PM in reply to knygathin_zhaum

knygathin_zhaum
Finland.

Like
56 minutes ago in reply to Dr. Dawg 1 Like

AlisonCreekside
Marc Lemire ... Doesn't he work for the Conservative Research Bureau, aka the Conservative Resource Group ?
While originally listed in 2010, his Gov. of Canada page was updated just a few days ago.
http://sage-geds.tpsgc-pwgsc.g...

Like Reply
Yesterday 06:05 PM

Dr. Dawg
Collapse
Holy crap! Updated with attribution.

Added: Well, not. I have just received a communication from a Person Who Knows--wrong Lemire. Too delicious to be true, alas.

Like Reply
Yesterday 06:22 PM in reply to AlisonCreekside F

http://drdawgsblawg.ca/2012/04/that-ol-nazi-label.shtml

[Connie Fournier]

Malice.

[Peter O'Donnell]

It appears to be a Jerry Seinfeld thread, in other words, a thread about nothing.

There are many of these to be found at the same source. They take this form ... "Remember how I was saying that Harper was a Nazi? Well, here's another piece of evidence, I think he's a Nazi in regard to ..." and it piles up in a big heap after a while.

Same goes for the vague associations on offer about Free Dominion, just because one can produce a thread in which there are pictures of two people who some people say are neo-Nazis (and others don't), then add a few names from Free Dominion, one is left with the impression (if one has not mastered logic) that there is some connection.

Here's an example with a question at the end.

On my recent trip to Ireland, I had too much to drink and accused an innkeeper of serving horsemeat in a stew. Now in the news, the Irish government wants to import horses. Let us raise our concerns for the safety of these unsuspecting horses about to be turned into stew.

See what I did there? I became a progressive blogger.

[ccurrie]

The National Socialist Worker's Party was hardly in favour of Bismark's conservative Socialism, as it evolved in the British world after Sir Robert Peel and before the 1960s. The eugenics movement in Canada has almost always been championed by Dawg's team -- our own lefty Socialists, whose competing false nationalisms -- one Canadian, one Quebecois -- have always struck me as comically inept adaptations of the European originals. Most of the manufactured post-colonial Nationalisms are embarassingly lame, and vary only slightly in all of the Commonwealth countries, and especially in the new Commonwealth republics.

The influence of the US is much stronger here than that of Germany. Let's not forget that it is the Democrats who were the party of slavery and the KKK, not the Republicans. Margaret Sanger's sneaky sneaky "don't tell anyone but we're going to kill all the n*****s in the womb while pretending to do them a favour" has been no less successful here as in the US. They don't lynch black people any more. Instead they have re-enslaved them, moved them into "social housing" and made as many as possible dependent on Socialist handouts. This racist American-style "anti-racism" has done more harm to the minorities that fell for it than traditional blind justice and free speech and free association have ever done or could do. It is tied very closely to the lefty preference for American-style abortion on demand. Even in their rabid anti-Americanism, the left here are supremely American. Carolyn Parrish would not be at all out of place at any Occupy rally stateside.

Let's not forget Tommy Douglas and the ever-popular forced sterilization of native girls. Among Socialists, eugenics have ever been a fascination of the left and rarely of the right. Eugenics are of course contrary to Christian doctrine, and in the absence of a major political party not beholden to the Socialist cults, many of us have in the past supported the conservative socialists as the lesser evil.

As I understand it, Fromm is as Narrow Back suggests -- too comically unreal to be anything but a plant. Lemire was slandered. He is a strong free speech advocate, who dislikes Communists, and if you want to know the sins of the Communists, the National Socialist white power types will quote you chapter and verse. I know. I've met a few. And after reading some Yockey, and Spengler, and Heidegger, I'm not going to call them stupid. Wrong. Not stupid. The NS types will also show crime stats, IQ stats, etc etc in rebuttal of the assinine lefty assertion that everyone is the same, and that the state should be actively involved in ensuring identical participation by race in all activities with identical outcomes. National or International or Fabian or... whatever. Socialism is still Socialism. Racist VS anti-racist is like transubstantiation VS consubstantiation. Like Prods and Catholics, Sunni and Shia, the differences between the Socialist cults are likely less than they think, and of only minor interest to someone who does not share their religion.

The Christian response to either variant of Socialism is the same: "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." (Matt. 25:40). Our faith does not require us to be blind to race. It also doesn't allow us to abort, sterilize or kill off the ones we think are weak or troublesome.

[Peter O'Donnell]

I would doubt that Paul Fromm is an kind of "front" for CSIS, he held similar views as a college student around 1968 to 1970. I saw and heard him at several debates on the occasion of a student government review commission being elected at the U of Toronto. The politics of that time were so far left that even a moderate conservative student appeared "far right" which is how Fromm portrayed himself, but the rhetoric was fairly standard white nationalist stuff even back then.

For the record, he finished with about 5% of the votes and Bob Rae was elected with a slate of radical socialists. They were huffing and puffing about power to the people and getting the man out of the chairman's office, or something like that, Obama style politics 1968 style.

So anyway, if Paul Fromm has been some sort of double agent he was recruited before 1968, everything else follows from that start. I understand the sentiment, because the comic-opera aspects of the German bold italic style organizations make it seem made up by committee. But I think the mundane truth is that Paul Fromm is what he appears to be, only he's become wider over the years.

[Edward Kennedy]

The biggest liars, bigots, and racists are lieberals.

Proof is everywhere.

[Narrow Back]

The National Socialist Worker's Party was hardly in favour of Bismark's conservative Socialism, as it evolved in the British world after Sir Robert Peel and before the 1960s. The eugenics movement in Canada has almost always been championed by Dawg's team -- our own lefty Socialists, whose competing false nationalisms -- one Canadian, one Quebecois -- have always struck me as comically inept adaptations of the European originals. Most of the manufactured post-colonial Nationalisms are embarassingly lame, and vary only slightly in all of the Commonwealth countries, and especially in the new Commonwealth republics.

The influence of the US is much stronger here than that of Germany. Let's not forget that it is the Democrats who were the party of slavery and the KKK, not the Republicans. Margaret Sanger's sneaky sneaky "don't tell anyone but we're going to kill all the n*****s in the womb while pretending to do them a favour" has been no less successful here as in the US. They don't lynch black people any more. Instead they have re-enslaved them, moved them into "social housing" and made as many as possible dependent on Socialist handouts. This racist American-style "anti-racism" has done more harm to the minorities that fell for it than traditional blind justice and free speech and free association have ever done or could do. It is tied very closely to the lefty preference for American-style abortion on demand. Even in their rabid anti-Americanism, the left here are supremely American. Carolyn Parrish would not be at all out of place at any Occupy rally stateside.

Let's not forget Tommy Douglas and the ever-popular forced sterilization of native girls. Among Socialists, eugenics have ever been a fascination of the left and rarely of the right. Eugenics are of course contrary to Christian doctrine, and in the absence of a major political party not beholden to the Socialist cults, many of us have in the past supported the conservative socialists as the lesser evil.

As I understand it, Fromm is as Narrow Back suggests -- too comically unreal to be anything but a plant. Lemire was slandered. He is a strong free speech advocate, who dislikes Communists, and if you want to know the sins of the Communists, the National Socialist white power types will quote you chapter and verse. I know. I've met a few. And after reading some Yockey, and Spengler, and Heidegger, I'm not going to call them stupid. Wrong. Not stupid. The NS types will also show crime stats, IQ stats, etc etc in rebuttal of the assinine lefty assertion that everyone is the same, and that the state should be actively involved in ensuring identical participation by race in all activities with identical outcomes. National or International or Fabian or... whatever. Socialism is still Socialism. Racist VS anti-racist is like transubstantiation VS consubstantiation. Like Prods and Catholics, Sunni and Shia, the differences between the Socialist cults are likely less than they think, and of only minor interest to someone who does not share their religion.

The Christian response to either variant of Socialism is the same: "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." (Matt. 25:40). Our faith does not require us to be blind to race. It also doesn't allow us to abort, sterilize or kill off the ones we think are weak or troublesome.

Excellent points all! Thank you!

[Narrow Back]

I would doubt that Paul Fromm is an kind of "front" for CSIS, he held similar views as a college student around 1968 to 1970. I saw and heard him at several debates on the occasion of a student government review commission being elected at the U of Toronto. The politics of that time were so far left that even a moderate conservative student appeared "far right" which is how Fromm portrayed himself, but the rhetoric was fairly standard white nationalist stuff even back then.

For the record, he finished with about 5% of the votes and Bob Rae was elected with a slate of radical socialists. They were huffing and puffing about power to the people and getting the man out of the chairman's office, or something like that, Obama style politics 1968 style.

So anyway, if Paul Fromm has been some sort of double agent he was recruited before 1968, everything else follows from that start. I understand the sentiment, because the comic-opera aspects of the German bold italic style organizations make it seem made up by committee. But I think the mundane truth is that Paul Fromm is what he appears to be, only he's become wider over the years.

Interesting. I seem to remember 1968 was the first time the spectre of a Nazi scourge in Canada was manufactured. MacLeans did a story on the fellow whose name now escapes me. My memory is terrible but I do know he is a member here on FD and has commented before. Of course the CJC was involved, as always...

Peter, you may be right about Fromm but my gut tells me otherwise. My memory may be poor but my gut is right 99% of the time. All of this Nazi nonsense is contrived, now and back then. That has been my experience and I have more than 20 years of experience with both sides 'in the trenches', as it were.

[Narrow Back]

The biggest liars, bigots, and racists are lieberals.

Proof is everywhere.

Hypocrites too.

[Narrow Back]

Malice.

mal·ice
noun
1.
desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another, either because of a hostile impulse or out of deep-seated meanness: the malice and spite of a lifelong enemy.
2.
Law . evil intent on the part of a person who commits a wrongful act injurious to others.

Most certainly.

This too.

Main Entry: malice  [mal-is]
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: hate, vengefulness
Synonyms: acerbity, animosity, animus, antipathy, bad blood, bane, bile, bitterness, despite, despitefulness, dirt, dislike, down, enmity, evil, grudge, hatefulness, hatred, hostility, ill will, implacability, malevolence, maliciousness, malignance, malignity, meanness, mordacity, poison, rancor, repugnance, resentment, spite, spitefulness, spleen, umbrage, venom, viciousness, vindictiveness

[Narrow Back]

I would doubt that Paul Fromm is an kind of "front" for CSIS, he held similar views as a college student around 1968 to 1970. I saw and heard him at several debates on the occasion of a student government review commission being elected at the U of Toronto. The politics of that time were so far left that even a moderate conservative student appeared "far right" which is how Fromm portrayed himself, but the rhetoric was fairly standard white nationalist stuff even back then.

For the record, he finished with about 5% of the votes and Bob Rae was elected with a slate of radical socialists. They were huffing and puffing about power to the people and getting the man out of the chairman's office, or something like that, Obama style politics 1968 style.

So anyway, if Paul Fromm has been some sort of double agent he was recruited before 1968, everything else follows from that start. I understand the sentiment, because the comic-opera aspects of the German bold italic style organizations make it seem made up by committee. But I think the mundane truth is that Paul Fromm is what he appears to be, only he's become wider over the years.

Interesting. I seem to remember 1968 was the first time the spectre of a Nazi scourge in Canada was manufactured. MacLeans did a story on the fellow whose name now escapes me. My memory is terrible but I do know he is a member here on FD and has commented before. Of course the CJC was involved, as always...

Peter, you may be right about Fromm but my gut tells me otherwise. My memory may be poor but my gut is right 99% of the time. All of this Nazi nonsense is contrived, now and back then. That has been my experience and I have more than 20 years of experience with both sides 'in the trenches', as it were.

I found the info I was trying to remember.
http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewt ... 0&t=118911

The fellow's name is John Beattie. It was 1965, not 68.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_John_Beattie

From the Wiki page:

Ernst Zundel’s Canadian Human Right Tribunal hearing

Beattie was to be a key witness for Paul Fromm during the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal concerning Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel in 2000. Fromm’s organization, the Canadian Association for Free Expression, had intervener status during the hearings.[8] Fromm claimed that Beattie would testify that the Canadian Nazi Party had been a front created by the Canadian Jewish Congress as a means to enact Section 319 of the Criminal Code:

"Beattie will reveal that he was a dupe and a patsy, that everything from his group's name to its major activities was suggested or quarterbacked by persons acting as agents for or reporting to the Canadian Jewish Congress. Uncannily, at the very time that the Canadian Nazi Party was being built up and just as quickly destroyed a government committee was holding hearings to propose anti-hate legislation. The Cohen Committee made significant mention of the threat posed by John Beattie. The Canadian Jewish Congress, which largely created the short-lived Canadian Nazi Party, had, since the 1930s been lobbying for restrictions on freedom of speech.

"Beattie will reveal how an agent for the Canadian Jewish Congress lured him into a technical breech of the law, which landed the now unemployed, penniless Nazi leader in prison for six months. Beattie will also expose the fact that the same agent proposed legal maneuvers [sic] that were calculated to frighten and cause distress among Jews, thus heightening the "Nazi" menace, which was used as the argument for the 1971 "hate law" (Section 319 of the Criminal Code) and the subsequent section 13.1 (telephonic communication of hate) of the Canadian Human Rights Act, where truth is no defence."[9][10]

When it came time for his testimony however, Beattie was unavailable. Though Fromm claimed that Beattie’s absence was as a result of a scheduling conflict, it appears that Beattie was upset by the wording of the press release that referred to him as a “dupe” and “patsy.” NOW magazine December 14, 2000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jo ... al_hearing

[Connie Fournier]

John Baglow has completely lost all credibility. He sits over there on his own little blog and shoots manure in our direction, and, if anyone here responds in kind, he will run to Court. His malicious hatred for us has impaired his logic to such a degree that the above article just looks like the rambling of a lunatic. There is no point in even trying to engage someone in that state in an intellectual debate.

[tango37]

When a liberal is losing a debate based on facts, logic and merit then you're sure to be called a racist, fascist, Hitlerite, Nazi, KKK member, far right wing extremist, xenophobe, mean spirited, John Bircher, etc. In their eyes that should end the discussion.
Why did classical liberalism , which developed in the 18th century, and was a philosophy committed to the ideas of limited government, freedom of speech, religion, assembly, press and free markets become this mutated monstrosity which passes for liberalism nowadays?

[ccurrie]

When a liberal is losing a debate based on facts, logic and merit then you're sure to be called a racist, fascist, Hitlerite, Nazi, KKK member, far right wing extremist, xenophobe, mean spirited, John Bircher, etc. In their eyes that should end the discussion.
Why did classical liberalism , which developed in the 18th century, and was a philosophy committed to the ideas of limited government, freedom of speech, religion, assembly, press and free markets become this mutated monstrosity which passes for liberalism nowadays?

Infiltration. As usual.

Herbert Henry Asquith, and David Lloyd George were the Communists who destroyed the Liberal Party in the UK in the years leading up to the Great War. Here it happened in the inter-war period, late in the career of Mackenzie-King.

Before the rot set in, the Whigs or Liberals would have been my party. I still cringe when I hear Rush talk about "liberals" when he means "Socialists". I *am* a liberal, of the sort known now as a Laurier Liberal, Gladstone Liberal, or Classical Liberal. Socialism is the most illiberal cult imaginable. The LPC is a mockery of liberalism. So much so that now we have a complete role reversal, and it is the aristocratic and industrialist Tories who are the champions of free trade, free speech, and liberalism in general.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_UK

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_of_Canada

[Gerry T. Neal]

Why did classical liberalism , which developed in the 18th century, and was a philosophy committed to the ideas of limited government, freedom of speech, religion, assembly, press and free markets become this mutated monstrosity which passes for liberalism nowadays?

It was inevitable that classical liberalism would evolve into contemporary progressive liberalism. Classical liberalism, like modern progressive liberalism, included the belief that evil and suffering are caused by flaws in human society rather than by the flaw in human nature we call sin. This idea implies that human beings can eliminate the flaws in human society through social reforms and thus either eliminate evil and suffering altogether (utopianism) or gradually eliminate more and more evil and suffering so as to make a better and happier world (progressivism).

Liberalism came in two phases. In the first phase, the phase of "classical liberalism", it attacked traditional Western societies and their institutions in the name of the "individual". In the second phase, the phase of "progressive liberalism" it has sought to build a "new society" in the place of traditional society, through government social engineering policies.

In neither phase did it actually increase liberty. As American conservative sociologist Robert Nisbet demonstrated in his book The Quest For Community, the free market capitalism of the 19th Century, was not produced by the laissez-faire policies recommended by its advocates, but by active state intervention. It is a simple historical fact that the period of classical liberalism was a period of government growth not government reduction.

This is why I titled my blog "Throne, Altar, Liberty". The old order of royalty, aristocracy, and established episcopal church, supported by the original Tory Party, was a freer society than that envisioned by liberals, classical or progressive. The best ideas of classical liberalism were ones which were entirely compatible with traditional English society. The worst ideas of classical liberalism, such as the state as the instrument of progress, an idea found in the writings of Jeremy Bentham back in the 18th Century, carried over into progressive liberalism in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Note that in the 18th Century, it was Sir. William Blackstone, a High Tory who believed in the "divine right of kings", who defended the "Rights of Englishmen" and expounded upon them in his famous Commentaries, and Jeremy Bentham, the radical Whig liberal, who dismissed the "Rights of Englishmen" as hindrances to the state, and therefore to progress.