I am the same age as Matthew, and I remember the Soviet Union well enough.

I remember my father telling me in 1991 "you have no idea how big this is," as the Soviet Union fell, adding that he had spent his entire life worrying about communism.

I responded that I had also spent my entire life worrying about communism.

I'm not quite sure whether much of the Left ever spent much time worrying about communism, making age irrelevant. After all, you had folks calling communism "economic democracy" and the like.

Yglesias is an Ivy League poli sci major professional pundit. It's time for him to know better.

Have you seen Matt's follow-up?

Jesus H. Christ if I read one more blog post or receive one more email saying I "don't know history" because just as Arnold said Soviet troops did occupy part of Austria I'm going to kill someone. I say that Soviet troops temporarily occupied part of Austria. The point is this: Arnold's speech implies that he grew up in a Communist bloc country and he did not.

Everybody else's point, of course, is that Arnold's speech implied nothing more than what it actually said: that Arnold has firsthand knowledge of what it was like to live under the Soviets.

I think they call what Matt's doing here "setting up a straw man argument."

I'm really sorry; that last comment was unclear. Let me try again. These are Matt's words from his site:

"Jesus H. Christ if I read one more blog post or receive one more email saying I 'don't know history' because just as Arnold said Soviet troops did occupy part of Austria I'm going to kill someone. I say that Soviet troops temporarily occupied part of Austria. The point is this: Arnold's speech implies that he grew up in a Communist bloc country and he did not."

Everything else in the above comment was thunk up and written down by yours truly.

Yglesias:

"...I can't help but note this bit of misleading-without-lying..."

and...

"The point is this: Arnold's speech implies that he grew up in a Communist bloc country and he did not. He grew up in a democratic social democracy after experiencing a few years of Soviet occupation (caused, let us not forget, but the Austrian public's wild embrace of Nazism, a political ideology Arnold did not see fit to distance himself from until he acquired US political ambitions)."

I haven't been reading Yglesias. Is he a Kerry supporter? If so, his picking at Ahnold's bio is pegging the hypocrisy meter.

Jeff- He can backtrack all he wants. He made a stupid remark and he got called on it. Arnold said not once but TWICE that the soviets occupied a sector of the country. What exactly did Yglesias what him to say?

Yglesias made a stupid comment implying Arnold was lying, when Yglesias has no freaking clue what Arnold remembers and what he doesn't.

Considering Yglesias is a kid who has no idea what it was like to fear the communists he has a hell of a lot of nerve making that post.

Of course Yglesias could never be guilty of "misleading-without-lying" in this very post could he????

Age is not the issue. Ignorance is. I am about the same age as Yglesias, perhaps a couple of years older, and I remember very well the drills during elementary school where our teachers taught us that we could avoid death in a nuclear attack simply by hiding under our desks. Also, since when have the books and documentaries about the Soviet Union been proven false to a generation that was "too young" to remember?

There are educated youth and there are ignorant youth. Yglesias may fall into the ignorant youth category, but that doesn't mean we all do.

Surely the salient fact is that Ahnold grew up in the British zone, and therefore didn't actually live under communist oppression at all.

Rather, he visited the communist bit of Austria a few times, and didn't like it. This is a pretty big difference.

John if you read the speech, Arnold says that not once but twice.

I have to say, I'm cheered by the comments from Chad Evans and John A. Kalb.

As someone who is just barely too young -- as in, born a few months after it was built -- to remember a world before the Berlin Wall, I felt a responsibility to learn as much as I could about all that so as to develop a worthwhile basis to guide my opinions.

I know from looking at my own generation that I was bucking a trend, and I'm glad to know that however strong the trend may still be, there are still people bucking it.

The Gropernator has a problem with the truth. It's glaringly obvious that the one less knows about Austria and the Soviet Union, the more one will be inclined to think Ahnold lived behind the Iron Curtain. Oh, and Ahnold never saw a debate between Nixon and McGovern, either. Dumbass. Haha.

He didn't say "debate." Dumbass. Haha.

Arnold has said that he came from a Soviet Occupied part of Austria ever since I can remember; why would he lie now? No one lies about that kind of fear. In "The Sound of Music" that's exactly what that family was also running from and made it to the states after many years. Arnold's fears as a child are very real and if anyone tries to knock the governator about his story better get his head in a book! The only thing he didn't mention about those years, was the fact he was also abused - I guess a father living scared under those conditions would beat their child, especially if the kid really didn't understand what was going on. Why can't you take this guy at his word? Because YOU didn't have to LIVE in such a STATE like he did and he has the RIGHT to tell his story as he remembers it. Arnold ROCKS and has no reason to lie. So change the subject to something you know, you idiots who know NOTHING!

I hate stupidity.

~C