I'd probably agree with LaFontaine on both the substantive disagreements with Schroeder that you mention, but that immigration stuff is pretty scary!

He has pointed to the courting of minority voters and the ongoing shift to a non- white majority in America as exemplifying the dangers of immigration.

As an American living in Germany, I don't enjoy seeing politicians rise to power on anti-immigrant platforms, even if the immigrants they're talking about are a few shades darker than me.  Who's next to be slammed when treating Turks badly doesn't solve the problem?

If I am not mistaken, that was a criticism of the USA, a criticism that I view as not just on-point, but historically connected to the other meaning (i.e. the myth of the USA as a New Israel, God's Own Country, Manifest Destiny, City On A Shining Hill, originating with the Pilgrims etc. and kept alive ever since).

his view is that while it is understandable that 'foreigners' from poor countries should choose to work in Germany, they should not be allowed to.

That, however, was indeed how I read him too, and I strongly disagree on this (I think immigrants don't really change joblessness either way, as they represent both new workers and new consumers: merely increasing the economy - but won't reduce pensions problems either). The only angle of economic migration/guest workers I think is left-relevant is a potential hollowing-out of workers' rights and pay reductions, both of which can be addressed by laws extending to these migrants rather than limiting immigration. However, this disagreement doesn't make this particular speech nicht salonfähig to me (I think this is just as wrong as arguing that immigrants or more children would reduce pensions fund deficits). I also note that Lafontaine advocated raising foreign aid in connection with restrictive immigration policy - that's decidedly more progressive than what all mainstream parties except Greens (and Prodi!) do across Europe now, which is restrictive immigration policy alone. (It's a bit hypocritical from the SPD to criticise Lafontaine as extremist after having enforced a 7-year limit on free movement between new and old EU members and Schily supporting Italy's policies.)

Then there was the utterly bizarre argument a couple weeks later that the Nazis weren't actually xenophobic?!

Now that is truly out of context! He said they were racist not xenophobic, bringing in foreigners for slave labour, and insinuated that this is repeated now in a different form, which indeed is evidence that he views economic migrants as victims of evil capitalists. On the other hand, I mostly disagree with this too - economic migrants may be exploited, but often escape worse at home, so it's an abuse they accept on their own rational decision rather than being fooled.

And yes, the Die Zeit article is a hatchet job...  But what does Lafontaine expect - right wing journalists certainly aren't going to soft pedal anything he says, and left wing ones will jump on this sort of stuff regardless of who says it.  Anyways, I want anybody who uses this sort of rhetoric to get raked over the coals; pour encourager les autres if you will...

Well, I'm no Lafontaine, so I'd like something more objective than a hatchet job to form my opinion of him :-) But, as for what Lafontaine should expect (based on what he writes in his book, or even if he just talked loosely), I agree with you 100%: he deserves to be raked, just like Mölleman deserved it even if Sharon is a war criminal.

If a party without those two ugly facets but with the same program existed, I'd have no problem with them being in government.

Let's end this with a hope that a generation change will take care of both your problems (which to emphasize, even if with a different weight, are my problems too). Altough the Left Party having the highest voter share in the pre-pensioneer generation was thematised, their 8% share (just 0.7% below the overall) among first-time voters shows re-supply isn't truly critical. (I think we should continue this debate when Saturday posts his thread.)

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

Now, please understand that I'm not saying these reforms are without merit. What I and many others found appalling was how Schroeder's government in the face of crisis turned around and did exactly what it had blasted their conservative predecessors for trying to do, without any attempt at damping the economic and psychological blow to the poor and unemployed and without any attempt at finding a "third way" between Keynsian (read, more or less, traditional social-democratic, comparable to the New Deal under FDR) and neoliberal policies.

If you can't convince them, confuse them. (Harry S. Truman)

Libertarianism, in its purest theoretical form, takes the idea of liberalism to its individualist extreme, making the abolition of all authority (especially state authority) the ideal. But in practice, most libertarians will focus on economic 'rights' (mostly ownership rights), and in my experience most would favor a quite militant rump State: one focusing on police (mostly against immigrants...) and wars. (But anti-war libertarians are very strongy against that too.)

Neoliberalism, which started with just the one Milton Friedman our libertarian troll keeps giving links on, doesn't differ that much in its desired utopistic end state from the libertarian 'practical' state - but the difference is in the way to achieve it. Neoliberalism thinks economic 'freedoms' should come first - and to achieve that, the (dictatoral) powers of the State can be used. (Friedman and cohorts of the Chicago school took this quite literally: they were flown in to act as economic advisors for military dictator Augusto Pinochet in Chile, shortly after the CIA-sponsored coup.)

Again in practice, neoliberalism boils down to much less, especially freedom-wise: the economic 'freedoms' created are the freedoms of entrepreneurs and investors, while the freedoms of others are curtained. The neoliberal policies are to constrain workers' rights, lower taxes for economic activity, privatise state holdings and services, and to seek to find a market-based solution to every problem (with emphasis on stock markets).

Now, whether this is right-from-the-centre or centrist etc., depends on the actual makeup of the political landscape in a country. In the USA, given that the DLC subscribes to it while both the neocons and part of the paleocons in the Republican Party are more extreme, this may actually be left-of-centre... in Germany, all parties except the Left Party adopted elements of it to varying degrees since 1998, so it may count as right-of-centre to centre. In South America, it increasingly looks like turning into a centre-right to far-right position. I'd hope it will turn that in Europe too (and lost hope that it could in the USA anytime soon).

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

and just to make it clear, thats 90% of eligible voters have to vote for the SPD not 90% of those that go to the polls. The need just about 189,000 more votes to achieve this. and Dresedn 1 has about 210.000 eligible voters.