Friday, February 19, 2010
Unified in Freedom
The ideological and political war between the tea party movement and statist elites comes down to a dispute over the concept of freedom. While the great majority of Americans cherish freedom according to their own values and ideals, elites dismiss the idea out of hand as outdated and obsolete. The argument for emphasizing freedom in this movement is two-fold: first, it is the organizing principle this country was founded on, and the one most consistent with reality; and second, it is the main platform that holds together all the disparate groups of the "tea party" coalition.
Elites like to imagine that average Americans are narrow-minded, reflexively conditioned rubes who unquestioningly cling to the obsolete ideology of freedom. Elites' resentment of the unwashed masses is fueled by the false notion that they are relatively enlightened, and thus they arrogantly seek to unify power and decision-making of the nation in the central government. Whether elites acknowledge it or not, their call to unity in a central government necessarily implies the destruction of freedom, all competing value-systems, and by implication, the nation itself.
What elites do not understand is that freedom is not just a quaint fetish for flag-waving fanatics. Elites see freedom as an impediment to their ability to use the power of government to "do good," and are thus extremely suspicious of the concept. But freedom is an ideal-type that reflects the reality that individuals are self-interested agents whose own minds and own lives drive each person's aspirations for self-empowerment; this may be conceived of as the enlightenment sense of freedom. Self-empowerment in the healthy manifestation is nurtured by laws that protect the rights of all individuals, which is reinforced by mutual respect of individuals as ends in and of themselves in a civil society. But this is not sufficient. People must be allowed to succeed or fail according to their own talents and merits in order for them to develop the ability to respond appropriately to the natural constraints of reality.
Reality in the world is a non-linear, complex system comprised of infinite interdependent variables, most of them uncontrollable by the means of mankind as isolated variables, let alone within the context of a complex reactive system. These variables are dispersed across a three-dimensional physical sphere, and most importantly, reality retains the property of the "fourth dimension" of time, that is, the change in the relationship of physical variables. Elites who advocate centralized decision-making for a society and economy must appreciate that an inestimable amount of information is needed in real-time for a body of sentient beings to control and coordinate millions of other human beings, themselves sentient beings requiring ongoing action and reaction to meet their own particular needs in real-time within their own respective environments. The informational hurdles to success for a centralized government is daunting enough, not to mention the immense task of administering and mobilizing to action the means to carry out centralized social and economic planning in real-time. Temporally, such a model of government is guaranteed to reflect entropy; the decisions of the government become prone to reaction, which over time becomes overreaction, and this in turn fuels chaos. The big picture suggests that the vision of a prosperous, vibrant, and harmonious centrally controlled state is nothing short of a quixotic pipe-dream, and as such, the attempt to implement one leads directly to systemic destruction of a nation founded on freedom. This argument can be summed up quite nicely with the Aristotelian principle, "Unity is the destruction of the state."
A basic underlying unity in values among citizens in a polity, however, does not imply destruction, but cohesion. What unites most Americans is the love of freedom, though each ideological group and subgroup has its own interpretation of what freedom means according to its underlying value-system. We shall briefly examine each ideological group and subgroup in American politics and its healthy and destructive dispositions towards the political, economic, and social ideal-type of freedom.
Americans are generally united in their value of freedom, though the main ideological groups, including conservatives, which are comprised of the religious right, fiscal conservatives, and national security conservatives, and also modern liberals, see and appreciate freedom quite differently. If we might adapt an Aristotelian analysis, each of these groups has a healthy and a destructive strain as it relates to other groups.
Religious conservatives are most rationally self-interested when they advocate freedom of conscience for all Americans. Lockean philosophy rightly predicted that freedom would lead to a healthy and vibrant religious life in a society. The destructive strain of the religious right condones violations of individual rights and free will in the interest of enforcing God's law on earth. Some religious zealots may seek to use the state to advance religious causes, or to combat progressives. By doing this, they change the political rules to those based on freedom to those where "the victor takes the spoils." It is quite evident that democracy, which is a "victor takes the spoils" political model, in the absence of individual rights, is not conducive to freedom; in a free country one group cannot deprive another group of rights simply by virtue of being a majority or plurality.
Fiscal conservatives are most ideologically consistent when they unapologetically insist on private property rights and free enterprise. While there are limited mandates for a legitimate government to provide security and to administer a just rule of law based on freedom of the individual, there are no such mandates for the government to seize property "for the common good." The general welfare of the United States is to enforce those principles the nation was founded on, including, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. By extension, drawing on the Lockean philosophy that informed the founding, this includes the right to private property. Fiscal conservatives err when they compromise on principles in the interest of pragmatism, expediency, or the false appearance of compassion.
National security conservatives advance the country's interests best when they advocate freedom from foreign entanglements, the primacy of self-defense, and the retention of liberty without trade-off for the fleeting illusion of security. National security conservatives are gravely mistaken when they support police state measures, which ironically threaten Americans more than any terrorist group, or the remote chance of invasion against us, a nuclear-armed power. In addition, the premise of protecting trade and assets abroad does not justify policing the world or nation-building friendly states. It is also flawed to argue that the United States can "force states to be free," as neoconservatives believe. The ideal-type of freedom at the national level rightly extends to our foreign policy, as well as to the most just and harmonious organization of international relations.
Modern liberalism used to have the benefit of being an ideology that promoted social freedom. In the course of ideological perversion by socialism and progressivism, however, it turned into a radically aggressive call to re-engineer America. The cause of freedom for each American morphed into freedom for particular groups, an absurd idea on the face of it, with the arbitrary cordoning off of such groups from assimilation into a capitalist America based on individual rights. The left accomplished this crucial conceit by engaging in divide and conquer politics under the guise of promoting diversity, multiculturalism, and moral and cultural relativism. The national unity of the value of individual freedom is thus thwarted by socialists and progressives, who violate the freedom of others by using the state to attack and undermine the value systems of rival ideological groups.
The left's call for "democracy" and centralized power in a national government is largely consistent with leftists' view of politics as group warfare. Unfortunately for the left, they are outnumbered by conservatives of all stripes, and are especially outnumbered when one adds libertarians and modern liberals (sometimes self-described as "moderates" and "independents") who have a correct appreciation for social freedom. Though for decades the uniting value-system of freedom overrode any move for collective action by conservatives, due largely to a "live and let live" attitude, the relentless assault on freedom by progressives and socialists within what was thought to be "liberal" ranks has provoked many Americans to take action to protect the Republic.
While progressives, socialists, and radicals thought that they could usher in the demise of freedom through massive systematic brainwashing in education and the media, they did not have the monopoly of information needed to either prevent the spontaneous self-organization of freedom-loving Americans, nor to prevent them from learning of the disastrous results of the statists' fundamentally misguided policies. The irony for the elites of the American hard left is that they will be defeated by the very model of democracy that they have hypocritically endorsed. Whether the grass-roots tea party movement to preserve and defend freedom eventually defeats itself by transforming into an aggressive, freedom-destroying form will be contingent upon its understanding and respect for the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights. If the currently active tea party movement maintains a healthy respect for individual freedom at all times, it will be spared an ultimately self-destructive transformation into what it intends to defeat; this would entail a fracturing into rival subgroups who have their own unique views of freedom.
Elites like to imagine that average Americans are narrow-minded, reflexively conditioned rubes who unquestioningly cling to the obsolete ideology of freedom. Elites' resentment of the unwashed masses is fueled by the false notion that they are relatively enlightened, and thus they arrogantly seek to unify power and decision-making of the nation in the central government. Whether elites acknowledge it or not, their call to unity in a central government necessarily implies the destruction of freedom, all competing value-systems, and by implication, the nation itself.
What elites do not understand is that freedom is not just a quaint fetish for flag-waving fanatics. Elites see freedom as an impediment to their ability to use the power of government to "do good," and are thus extremely suspicious of the concept. But freedom is an ideal-type that reflects the reality that individuals are self-interested agents whose own minds and own lives drive each person's aspirations for self-empowerment; this may be conceived of as the enlightenment sense of freedom. Self-empowerment in the healthy manifestation is nurtured by laws that protect the rights of all individuals, which is reinforced by mutual respect of individuals as ends in and of themselves in a civil society. But this is not sufficient. People must be allowed to succeed or fail according to their own talents and merits in order for them to develop the ability to respond appropriately to the natural constraints of reality.
Reality in the world is a non-linear, complex system comprised of infinite interdependent variables, most of them uncontrollable by the means of mankind as isolated variables, let alone within the context of a complex reactive system. These variables are dispersed across a three-dimensional physical sphere, and most importantly, reality retains the property of the "fourth dimension" of time, that is, the change in the relationship of physical variables. Elites who advocate centralized decision-making for a society and economy must appreciate that an inestimable amount of information is needed in real-time for a body of sentient beings to control and coordinate millions of other human beings, themselves sentient beings requiring ongoing action and reaction to meet their own particular needs in real-time within their own respective environments. The informational hurdles to success for a centralized government is daunting enough, not to mention the immense task of administering and mobilizing to action the means to carry out centralized social and economic planning in real-time. Temporally, such a model of government is guaranteed to reflect entropy; the decisions of the government become prone to reaction, which over time becomes overreaction, and this in turn fuels chaos. The big picture suggests that the vision of a prosperous, vibrant, and harmonious centrally controlled state is nothing short of a quixotic pipe-dream, and as such, the attempt to implement one leads directly to systemic destruction of a nation founded on freedom. This argument can be summed up quite nicely with the Aristotelian principle, "Unity is the destruction of the state."
A basic underlying unity in values among citizens in a polity, however, does not imply destruction, but cohesion. What unites most Americans is the love of freedom, though each ideological group and subgroup has its own interpretation of what freedom means according to its underlying value-system. We shall briefly examine each ideological group and subgroup in American politics and its healthy and destructive dispositions towards the political, economic, and social ideal-type of freedom.
Americans are generally united in their value of freedom, though the main ideological groups, including conservatives, which are comprised of the religious right, fiscal conservatives, and national security conservatives, and also modern liberals, see and appreciate freedom quite differently. If we might adapt an Aristotelian analysis, each of these groups has a healthy and a destructive strain as it relates to other groups.
Religious conservatives are most rationally self-interested when they advocate freedom of conscience for all Americans. Lockean philosophy rightly predicted that freedom would lead to a healthy and vibrant religious life in a society. The destructive strain of the religious right condones violations of individual rights and free will in the interest of enforcing God's law on earth. Some religious zealots may seek to use the state to advance religious causes, or to combat progressives. By doing this, they change the political rules to those based on freedom to those where "the victor takes the spoils." It is quite evident that democracy, which is a "victor takes the spoils" political model, in the absence of individual rights, is not conducive to freedom; in a free country one group cannot deprive another group of rights simply by virtue of being a majority or plurality.
Fiscal conservatives are most ideologically consistent when they unapologetically insist on private property rights and free enterprise. While there are limited mandates for a legitimate government to provide security and to administer a just rule of law based on freedom of the individual, there are no such mandates for the government to seize property "for the common good." The general welfare of the United States is to enforce those principles the nation was founded on, including, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. By extension, drawing on the Lockean philosophy that informed the founding, this includes the right to private property. Fiscal conservatives err when they compromise on principles in the interest of pragmatism, expediency, or the false appearance of compassion.
National security conservatives advance the country's interests best when they advocate freedom from foreign entanglements, the primacy of self-defense, and the retention of liberty without trade-off for the fleeting illusion of security. National security conservatives are gravely mistaken when they support police state measures, which ironically threaten Americans more than any terrorist group, or the remote chance of invasion against us, a nuclear-armed power. In addition, the premise of protecting trade and assets abroad does not justify policing the world or nation-building friendly states. It is also flawed to argue that the United States can "force states to be free," as neoconservatives believe. The ideal-type of freedom at the national level rightly extends to our foreign policy, as well as to the most just and harmonious organization of international relations.
Modern liberalism used to have the benefit of being an ideology that promoted social freedom. In the course of ideological perversion by socialism and progressivism, however, it turned into a radically aggressive call to re-engineer America. The cause of freedom for each American morphed into freedom for particular groups, an absurd idea on the face of it, with the arbitrary cordoning off of such groups from assimilation into a capitalist America based on individual rights. The left accomplished this crucial conceit by engaging in divide and conquer politics under the guise of promoting diversity, multiculturalism, and moral and cultural relativism. The national unity of the value of individual freedom is thus thwarted by socialists and progressives, who violate the freedom of others by using the state to attack and undermine the value systems of rival ideological groups.
The left's call for "democracy" and centralized power in a national government is largely consistent with leftists' view of politics as group warfare. Unfortunately for the left, they are outnumbered by conservatives of all stripes, and are especially outnumbered when one adds libertarians and modern liberals (sometimes self-described as "moderates" and "independents") who have a correct appreciation for social freedom. Though for decades the uniting value-system of freedom overrode any move for collective action by conservatives, due largely to a "live and let live" attitude, the relentless assault on freedom by progressives and socialists within what was thought to be "liberal" ranks has provoked many Americans to take action to protect the Republic.
While progressives, socialists, and radicals thought that they could usher in the demise of freedom through massive systematic brainwashing in education and the media, they did not have the monopoly of information needed to either prevent the spontaneous self-organization of freedom-loving Americans, nor to prevent them from learning of the disastrous results of the statists' fundamentally misguided policies. The irony for the elites of the American hard left is that they will be defeated by the very model of democracy that they have hypocritically endorsed. Whether the grass-roots tea party movement to preserve and defend freedom eventually defeats itself by transforming into an aggressive, freedom-destroying form will be contingent upon its understanding and respect for the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights. If the currently active tea party movement maintains a healthy respect for individual freedom at all times, it will be spared an ultimately self-destructive transformation into what it intends to defeat; this would entail a fracturing into rival subgroups who have their own unique views of freedom.
The Eminent Absurdity of Eminent Domain
When Emperor Napoleon was building a palace for his son, the king of Rome, one of the landowners asked a very high price for his home, which was expected to be demolished to make room for the palace. Napoleon's advisors suggested using the government's eminent domain powers to seize the property. The emperor said: "Leave it where it is - as a monument to my respect for private property."
Check this out, dictator Napoleon respected private property and modern "democracies" do not. The landmark Kelo ruling has now brought the absurd logic of eminent domain to its ultimate conclusion. Witness the results of government's promotion of the "public good":
As of September 2009, the original Kelo property is now a vacant lot, generating no tax revenue for the city.[14] (…) Two years after the Supreme Court decision nothing is happening on the ground and it appears doubtful whether the city's redevelopment project will proceed. In September 2009, the land where Susette Kelo's home had once stood was an empty lot, and the promised 3,169 new jobs and $1.2 million a year in tax revenues had not materialized.[14] In November 2009, Pfizer announced it would close its New London research facility.[16] After the Pfizer announcement, the San Francisco Chronicle in its lead editorial called the Kelo decision infamous: "The well-laid plans of redevelopers, however, did not pan out. The land where Suzette Kelo's little pink house once stood remains undeveloped. The proposed hotel-retail-condo "urban village" has not been built. And earlier this month, Pfizer Inc. announced that it is closing the $350 million research center in New London that was the anchor for the New London redevelopment plan, and will be relocating some 1,500 jobs."
But some clouds do have a silver lining:
A group of New London residents formed a local political party, One New London, to combat the takings. While unsuccessful in gaining control of the New London City Council, they gained two seats and continue to try to gain a majority in the New London City Council to rectify the Ft. Trumbull takings. In June 2006 Governor M. Jodi Rell intervened with New London city officials, proposing the homeowners involved in the suit be deeded property in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood so they may retain their homes.
The Kelo decision increased public awareness of eminent domain abuse. Many states have now passed constitutional and statutory restrictions on eminent domain. However, what many fail to understand is that the problem is not "abuse" of eminent domain but eminent domain itself. Once you place the vague and absurd notion of "public good" above private property, abuse is inevitable. Using the pretext of the allegedly beneficial effects of infrastructure construction, eminent domain destroys the most beneficial institution of them all - private property.
The Fifth Amendment currently reads:
Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
But it should read:
Nor shall private property be taken for public use. Period.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Political Liberty vs Individual Liberty
Benjamin Constant contrasts what the ancient Greeks and Romans understood by "liberty" (libertas) and what liberty meant in the age of classical liberalism. He demonstrates that true liberty is not two wolves' freedom to vote a lamb into their jaws, as most modern politicians and so-called political scientists would have us believe. The ancients failed to understand that political liberty is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is a safeguard for individual freedom. Without individual liberty, political liberty leads to the worst kind of despotism. By closely imitating ancient republicanism, the French revolutionaries ushered in a tyranny far more oppressive than that of Louis XVI or even his more absolutist predecessors. The Reign of Terror, in turn, paved the way for three modern atrocities that seek to partially reconstruct this ancient idea of "collective" liberty (an oxymoron and a misnomer) - democracy, nationalism and socialism.
Moreover, while ancient republicanism revolved around war as society's chief concern and source of virtue, modern liberty is based on a more rational and sound way of obtaining wealth - commerce. Modern capitalism is inherently anti-war (that is, aggressors should be punished but a free society cannot be an aggressor itself because it has much more to gain from peaceful trade than from military plunder). Below is a quote:
Thus among the ancients the individual, almost always sovereign in public affairs, was a slave in all his private relations. As a citizen, he decided on peace and war; as a private individual, he was constrained, watched and repressed in all his movements; as a member of the collective body, he interrogated, dismissed, condemned, beggared, exiled, or sentenced to death his magistrates and superiors; as a subject of the collective body he could himself be deprived of his status, stripped of his privileges, banished, put to death, by the discretionary will of the whole to which he belonged. Among the moderns, on the contrary, the individual, independent in his private life, is, even in the freest of states, sovereign only in appearance. His sovereignty is restricted and almost always suspended. If, at fixed and rare intervals, in which he is again surrounded by precautions and obstacles, he exercises this sovereignty, it is always only to renounce it.
Fallout from Duke Lacrosse Rape Case An Indictment of Academia, Journalism, and Racial Activism
The opening two paragraphs:
Durham police arrested Duke lacrosse accuser Crystal Gale Mangum, 33, late Wednesday after she allegedly assaulted her boyfriend, set his clothes on fire in a bathtub and threatened to stab him.
Authorities charged her with attempted first-degree murder, five counts of arson, assault and battery, communicating threats, three counts of misdemeanor child abuse, injury to personal property, identity theft and resisting, delaying and obstructing an officer.
She sounds like a real peach - not to give Ms. Mangum any ideas on future stripper names. Buried down in the ho-hum "nothing to see here" story are some choice quotes:
Mangum is the author of the memoir "Last Dance for Grace." She was a student at North Carolina Central University in 2006 and also worked as an exotic dancer when she performed at the now infamous Duke lacrosse party."
The infamous Duke Lacrosse party? What is infamous is the way the media botched the reporting of story, leaping to the conclusion of guilt based solely on race. More misleading and half-reporting:
"David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann were indicted on rape and other charges on the basis of her allegations and were eventually exonerated after North Carolina's attorney general dismissed the case, citing a lack of evidence."
It is true that the prosecutor Mike Nifong eventually exonerated the youths, but only after prosecuting a case based on heresy and making several egregiously misleading statements. Nifong, who was up for re-election, apparently took the case due to its politically explosive implications.
In case the lamestream media doesn't recall, the Duke academic community, left-wing journalists, and professional race-baiters lept to the opportunity to condemn young white students based on the flimsy testimony of a poor black stripper - err, exotic dancer.
The Paul Harvey rest of the story doesn't look so good for you race-traders on the left now, does it? You character assassinate innocent people according to race and move on as if nothing happened. But don't worry, drive-bys, we are checking up on you people, and let me tell you, yall don't look good.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Garden Variety Totalitarianism
Radicals, modern liberals, socialists, communists, progressives - all are plant varieties in the garden of leftist totalitarianism. Each is rooted in its own doctrines and dogmas, watered in "noble lies," and nourished in the soil of disaffection and rebellion against objective reality.
The leftist radical is inspired first and foremost by the French Revolution. Deeply dissatisfied by the status quo of any kind, he projects his existential rage onto the world at large, "the system," "the State" (just or unjust), and "the man." Jean Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, and even the murderous Robespierre are among the heroes in the leftist radical's pantheon.
Modern liberals claim to be ideologically descended from the Enlightenment, and believe themselves to be the pinnacle of the "liberal" values of emancipation and equality. Yet the dismissal of human nature and the value of the individual that arose through "liberalism's" fusion with utilitarianism, and its secularization during the increasing influence of Darwinism, mutated the Christian-Reason utopian strain of liberalism into a call for statists to create a heaven on earth.
Socialists are often mistaken to be "soft communists" or weak-kneed believers in Marxism unwilling to implement communist ideas in practice without regard to human life. But note that modern liberals and socialists are often conflated. Socialism is a utopian collectivist idea predating Marx. Marx often used the language of socialism to describe his ideas, and many times used the term interchangably with communism. Modern liberals, because of the weak strain of humanism tenuously clinging to their ideology, are not as strident as socialists and often disagree with them amongst themselves. Socialists can best be thought of as "blooming communists."
Communism, because of its ready association with totalitarian nightmare states of the twentieth century, is disavowed by most of the left to the point where the invocation of the term is enough to provoke nervous fits of laughter in leftist circles. Communism is most easily thought of as the implementation of socialism by direct force. There are many species of communism, and we may therefore more readily think of communism as a genus of leftist ideology. One species is Marxist-Leninism, or the supposed dictatorship of the proletariat ushered in by a party of professional revolutionaries; another is Maoism, which adapts Marxist-Leninism to instrumentalize a "revolutionary class" of peasants; Trotskyism, which is simply put an elaborate theory of "permanent revolution" and associated tactics; and Stalinism, which is a term intended to suggest that it is somehow a virulent wild strain that is a radical departure from communism writ large. Along with this fallacy, that Stalinism is a departure from communism and not simply one variant of it, there is the propaganda that communism is the utopian fulfillment of socialism. On the contrary, there has never been and can never be a utopian fulfillment of socialism; therefore in doctrine and in practice, communism is the forcible implementation of socialism, with that associated blatant disregard for reality.
Progressivism is America's native version of socialism or communism. It is communism on the slow track, which is necessary due to the vitality of American's founding. Progressivism is a unique hybrid of labor movements; populist anti-business sentiment; the ideal of statist-pragmatic-bureaucratic micro-management of the economy and society by elites in order to achieve what they conceive of as "the common good"; and gospel utopianism. Progressivism, when harnessed to achieve the modern liberal ends, results in socialism in practice, which eventually produces communism. In its wrestling with what are thought to be the hardy "weeds" of private property and free enterprise, progressivism in the interim period to communism appears a lot like fascism, or the de facto control of the economy by the state (as opposed to communism, which seeks to eradicate private property).
Barack Obama can in this context be thought of as the "Great Gardener" of the Left. With his spade he pulls out the "weeds" of private property and free enterprise. He sprays pesticides like Race-away, PoliticalCorrectnessBeGone, and Teab*****cide in the media to create a toxic atmosphere for particularly resistant strains. And after the pesticides are allowed to soak in, he takes a riding lawnmower to the Constitution.
But as the leftists try to recreate their totalitarian version of the Garden of Eden, a return to the days when men and women could run around naked like primitive hippies; with all the herbs and seed-bearing plants like cannabis to "use"; with no work or personal responsibilities; a place with no climate; no competition; no desire for personal achievement; one with no divisions among men to cause us squabbles; essentially, a place unlike any seen on earth; they disregard reality, which inevitably comes back with a vengeance. The fatal flaw in all ideologies of the left is that the beautiful flowering societies of their imagination always wither and die in the sunlight of truth.
The leftist radical is inspired first and foremost by the French Revolution. Deeply dissatisfied by the status quo of any kind, he projects his existential rage onto the world at large, "the system," "the State" (just or unjust), and "the man." Jean Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, and even the murderous Robespierre are among the heroes in the leftist radical's pantheon.
Modern liberals claim to be ideologically descended from the Enlightenment, and believe themselves to be the pinnacle of the "liberal" values of emancipation and equality. Yet the dismissal of human nature and the value of the individual that arose through "liberalism's" fusion with utilitarianism, and its secularization during the increasing influence of Darwinism, mutated the Christian-Reason utopian strain of liberalism into a call for statists to create a heaven on earth.
Socialists are often mistaken to be "soft communists" or weak-kneed believers in Marxism unwilling to implement communist ideas in practice without regard to human life. But note that modern liberals and socialists are often conflated. Socialism is a utopian collectivist idea predating Marx. Marx often used the language of socialism to describe his ideas, and many times used the term interchangably with communism. Modern liberals, because of the weak strain of humanism tenuously clinging to their ideology, are not as strident as socialists and often disagree with them amongst themselves. Socialists can best be thought of as "blooming communists."
Progressivism is America's native version of socialism or communism. It is communism on the slow track, which is necessary due to the vitality of American's founding. Progressivism is a unique hybrid of labor movements; populist anti-business sentiment; the ideal of statist-pragmatic-bureaucratic micro-management of the economy and society by elites in order to achieve what they conceive of as "the common good"; and gospel utopianism. Progressivism, when harnessed to achieve the modern liberal ends, results in socialism in practice, which eventually produces communism. In its wrestling with what are thought to be the hardy "weeds" of private property and free enterprise, progressivism in the interim period to communism appears a lot like fascism, or the de facto control of the economy by the state (as opposed to communism, which seeks to eradicate private property).
Barack Obama can in this context be thought of as the "Great Gardener" of the Left. With his spade he pulls out the "weeds" of private property and free enterprise. He sprays pesticides like Race-away, PoliticalCorrectnessBeGone, and Teab*****cide in the media to create a toxic atmosphere for particularly resistant strains. And after the pesticides are allowed to soak in, he takes a riding lawnmower to the Constitution.
But as the leftists try to recreate their totalitarian version of the Garden of Eden, a return to the days when men and women could run around naked like primitive hippies; with all the herbs and seed-bearing plants like cannabis to "use"; with no work or personal responsibilities; a place with no climate; no competition; no desire for personal achievement; one with no divisions among men to cause us squabbles; essentially, a place unlike any seen on earth; they disregard reality, which inevitably comes back with a vengeance. The fatal flaw in all ideologies of the left is that the beautiful flowering societies of their imagination always wither and die in the sunlight of truth.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Keynes on Lenin
John Maynard Keynes on Vladimir Lenin's proposal on how best to destroy capitalism:
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, Governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity (or fairness) of the existing distribution of wealth.
As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.
Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of Society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, Governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity (or fairness) of the existing distribution of wealth.
As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.
Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of Society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
Mark Steyn Puts the Weight of the Nation, Perhaps the Western World on the Tea Party Movement's Shoulders
Mark Steyn may have it exactly right that, barring any mass pro-liberty uprisings in Europe, the fate of Western Civilization as a fount of capitalism, freedom, and individualism may indeed be on the tea party movement's shoulders. The movement must neither be co-opted by statists or populists and must stay as broad and focused a coalition as possible. Enforcing fiscal sanity and limited Constitutional government are sufficient tasks in the short-term to occupy all citizens' attention
From NRO Online:
[...]The Washington Post ran a remarkable headline this week: “Europe Could Use Its Own Tea Party.” Underneath, David Ignatius went through the obligatory metropolitan condescension toward America’s swampdwelling knuckledraggers before acknowledging that the Continent’s problem was that there was no similar populist movement demanding fiscal sanity from the governing class.
He’s right. I’ve been saying for months that the difference between America and Europe is that, when the global economy nosedived, everywhere from Iceland to Bulgaria mobs took to the streets and besieged Parliament demanding to know why government didn’t do more for them. This is the only country in the developed world where a mass movement took to the streets to say we can do just fine if you control-freak statists would just stay the hell out of our lives, and our pockets. You can shove your non-stimulating stimulus, your jobless jobs bill, and your multi-trillion-dollar porkathons. This isn’t karaoke. These guys are singing “I’ll do it my way” for real.
But it’s awfully late in the day. The end is near, we face the final curtain, and it’s an open question whether the spirit of the tea parties can triumph over the soporific, sophomoric, self-flattering conformism of that [aforementioned "Green Police"] Audi ad: Groupthink compliance has never felt so right! [End.]
The consequences of losing America as a beacon of liberty and hope in the world would be unimaginable. Reversing the crash course of Western Civilization requires more than lashing out at transient issues and political figures; it requires no less than a revolution of ideas along objectivist lines.
From NRO Online:
[...]The Washington Post ran a remarkable headline this week: “Europe Could Use Its Own Tea Party.” Underneath, David Ignatius went through the obligatory metropolitan condescension toward America’s swampdwelling knuckledraggers before acknowledging that the Continent’s problem was that there was no similar populist movement demanding fiscal sanity from the governing class.
He’s right. I’ve been saying for months that the difference between America and Europe is that, when the global economy nosedived, everywhere from Iceland to Bulgaria mobs took to the streets and besieged Parliament demanding to know why government didn’t do more for them. This is the only country in the developed world where a mass movement took to the streets to say we can do just fine if you control-freak statists would just stay the hell out of our lives, and our pockets. You can shove your non-stimulating stimulus, your jobless jobs bill, and your multi-trillion-dollar porkathons. This isn’t karaoke. These guys are singing “I’ll do it my way” for real.
But it’s awfully late in the day. The end is near, we face the final curtain, and it’s an open question whether the spirit of the tea parties can triumph over the soporific, sophomoric, self-flattering conformism of that [aforementioned "Green Police"] Audi ad: Groupthink compliance has never felt so right! [End.]
The consequences of losing America as a beacon of liberty and hope in the world would be unimaginable. Reversing the crash course of Western Civilization requires more than lashing out at transient issues and political figures; it requires no less than a revolution of ideas along objectivist lines.
We're All Grecians Now?
From Zero Hedge:
For Greece, with on and off balance sheet liabilities at over 800%, it's game over. For the Eurozone, with the same ratio at about 500%, it is also game over. For the US, at 500%+, it is, you guessed it (sorry Joseph Stiglitz), game over, but since we have the printers, it will simply take a little longer.[ More...]
And here is the topic that will dominate over all pundit round table discussions in the next weeks: the entire world is insolvent, although some are more insolvent than others. Greek total net liabilities (on and off balance sheet) to GDP are 800%! EU: at 470%, the US, at over 500%. There is no way out but default.
For Greece, with on and off balance sheet liabilities at over 800%, it's game over. For the Eurozone, with the same ratio at about 500%, it is also game over. For the US, at 500%+, it is, you guessed it (sorry Joseph Stiglitz), game over, but since we have the printers, it will simply take a little longer.[ More...]
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Marxism for Dummies, or, Marxism is For Dummies
While socialism and communism have now been thoroughly discredited, many still maintain that Karl Marx's social theories, at least, remain relevant. While grudgingly acknowledging that Marxian economics, in particular the labor theory of value, is neither original nor correct, Marx's defenders claim that his social analysis — in particular, his theory of class conflict — remains a real scientific contribution.
The famous and dramatic opening lines of the Communist Manifesto boldly state that
the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles…. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight.The "distinctive feature" of capitalism, they say, is that in contrast to the "complicated arrangement of society into various orders," the "manifold gradation of social rank" that characterized all "earlier epochs of history," the
epoch of the bourgeoisie … has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat.According to Engels's notes to the 1888 edition, "bourgeois" refers to "capitalists, owners of the means of social production, and employers of wage laborers." Proletarians are defined as those "in the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live."
The process by which capitalism simplifies class antagonisms is presented in detail in volume one of Capital. The bourgeoisie are able to pit worker against worker, thereby keeping wage rates at subsistence levels. And
The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class.Their fight, however, is in vain: They are unable to compete with the large factories established by the capitalists. They go bankrupt and "are turned into proletarians." Thus, says Marx, "the other classes perish and disappear in the face of modern industry." In time, only two classes remain: the bourgeoisie, who "usurp and monopolize all advantages," and the proletariat, for whom "the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, [and] exploitation" continues to grow. Eventually, this class will become so numerous, and their misery so severe, that they will rise up and "expropriate the expropriators."
On the surface, Marx's definition of class is simple and clear. Yet its implications, as Marx himself came to realize, are devastating to his analysis. Marx assumed that those who owned or controlled the means of production were the rich and powerful, while those who sold their labor did so because they were weak and poor. While he acknowledged that these were "pure" types, Marx believed that as the capitalist system ran its course and the small and middle-class independent operators were gradually eliminated, the class system would become more and more pure.
In fact, the distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat is neither clear nor simple. First, the characterization of the proletariat as those who work for a living and the bourgeoisie as those who hire others to work for them has an obvious and insidious implication: only one group in society, the proletariat, actually does any productive work, while the bourgeoisie live off or "exploit" the workers. Marx thereby reduces work to physical labor, glossing over the fact that income is earned by providing services to others, and that physical labor is merely one way of doing this. Nevertheless, Marx's definitional distinction between worker and owner was a master stroke of political propaganda. [More]
Scientist at Center of Climategate Fesses Up to Fraud
So climate "skeptics" are "deniers" who are no different than Holocaust deniers? This global warming hoax should not only be remembered for one of the most colossal and widespread frauds in world history, but as a TEXTBOOK CASE of leftist "big lies." The modus operandi appears to be trading our money for their power, thereby buying businesses and universities the ropes to hang themselves. From Newsbusters:
ClimateGate's Phil 'Hide the Decline' Jones Admits Manipulating Data
The British scientist in the middle of November's ClimateGate scandal says that contrary to what Al Gore and many in the media claim, the debate concerning manmade global warming is not over.
"There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well," Phil Jones, the former head of Britain's Climatic Research Unit told the BBC.
In a lengthy Q&A published at BBC.com Saturday, Jones also said: the recent warming trend that began in 1975 is not at all different than two other planetary warming phases since 1850; there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995, and; it is possible the Medieval Warm Period was indeed a global phenomenon thereby making the temperatures seen in the latter part of the 20th century by no means unprecedented.
Maybe most important, Jones explained what "hide the decline" in ClimateGate e-mail messages meant confirming they manipulated data (questions in bold, h/t Sonic Frog via Glenn Reynolds): [More]
The British scientist in the middle of November's ClimateGate scandal says that contrary to what Al Gore and many in the media claim, the debate concerning manmade global warming is not over.
"There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well," Phil Jones, the former head of Britain's Climatic Research Unit told the BBC.
In a lengthy Q&A published at BBC.com Saturday, Jones also said: the recent warming trend that began in 1975 is not at all different than two other planetary warming phases since 1850; there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995, and; it is possible the Medieval Warm Period was indeed a global phenomenon thereby making the temperatures seen in the latter part of the 20th century by no means unprecedented.
Maybe most important, Jones explained what "hide the decline" in ClimateGate e-mail messages meant confirming they manipulated data (questions in bold, h/t Sonic Frog via Glenn Reynolds): [More]
Hey, The Olympics Are On - So We're Going to Watch Your Every Move
Why announce this to the world, including all terrorists? The reason is that this isn't about terrorism at all, it is about desensitizing Americans to infractions of their civil liberties. It is about trampling on the Constitution without fear of future investigative exposure adding to the public perception of impropriety. It is about gathering information on political dissenters, including conducting surveillance of so-called "right-wing extremists" who have the gall to believe in individual liberty, as many of us anti-statist bloggers can testify to personally. And ultimately, it is about intimidating people into self-censorship.
As a quasi-journalist who has worked in Russia, this last point shouldn't be overlooked. Those who publish criticism of the Kremlin are always aware that the Russian intelligence services are watching. Sure, you can technically criticize Putin or Medvedev, but you wouldn't want anything unfortunate to happen to you, your business, or your publication, would you? Like tax and financial audits, unannounced building inspections, neck ties, contracts, high mountains - use your imagination. And don't think that that sort of chill of free speech isn't exactly what Washington wants. When I look at our nation's capital nowadays, I see the future Kremlin of the United States.
Obama Goes Into Full Dictator Mode
From The New York Slimes:
With much of his legislative agenda stalled in Congress, President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities.
The latest on President Obama, his administration and other news from Washington and around the nation
Mr. Obama has not given up hope of progress on Capitol Hill, aides said, and has scheduled a session with Republican leaders on health care later this month. But in the aftermath of a special election in Massachusetts that cost Democrats unilateral control of the Senate, the White House is getting ready to act on its own in the face of partisan gridlock heading into the midterm campaign.
“We are reviewing a list of presidential executive orders and directives to get the job done across a front of issues,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff. [More]
With much of his legislative agenda stalled in Congress, President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities.
The latest on President Obama, his administration and other news from Washington and around the nation
Mr. Obama has not given up hope of progress on Capitol Hill, aides said, and has scheduled a session with Republican leaders on health care later this month. But in the aftermath of a special election in Massachusetts that cost Democrats unilateral control of the Senate, the White House is getting ready to act on its own in the face of partisan gridlock heading into the midterm campaign.
“We are reviewing a list of presidential executive orders and directives to get the job done across a front of issues,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff. [More]
Friday, February 12, 2010
Why is Ayn Rand Copyrighted?
Why is Ayn Rand copyrighted? That is like Aristotle or Plato being copyrighted. For those who have not read her smaller, more digestible, more accessible works, such as her essays in the collection The Voice of Reason, there really is no substitute for her lucidity, her incisive insight, and the irresistible force of her logic.
The best I have to offer to anyone who wants to know why intellectuals in America tend to be so philosophically and morally bankrupt, I highly recommend, "Altruism as Appeasement," the sixth essay in the Voice collection. [Another excellent resource with a similar theme is Dr. Thomas Sowell's Intellectuals and Society, also available in audio format.] Rand's essay summarizes my frustration and disappointment with "intellectuals" since I first was naive enough to think that most of them cared about knowledge and truth, and that the thing that they value above all in this world is the development of their minds. Ayn Rand crushes this illusion once and for all, and reconstructs the pieces to form an image of the modern pseudo-intellectual as a man without the moral fortitude to stand up to the collectivist herd and inform them that their mystical subjectivist theories rest on feet of clay. And perhaps that is putting it too kindly - feet of sand might be more apropos.
The central thrust of "Altruism as Appeasement" is the sketch of the burgeoning intellectual who seeks out camaraderie in academia only to find that the majority of students and even professors have compromised the integrity of their own minds long ago in the interest of turning education into a social bonding exercise. The depiction of the elitist as a fearful snob quavering in his boots at the suggestion of an uprising of the unwashed masses is not to be missed. It explains the elitist's twisted view of his fellow man, and his inner craving for government as a sprawling Kraken, whose tentacles hold down the millions of mental Liliputians lest they debauch the entire social order in an orgy of aimless violence and excess.
MSNBC Admits: "We're Not Marxists, We're Socialists" - HUH??
9/11 Truther Lawrence O'Donnell's blow-up on live TV at Marc Thiessen has got to be seen to believe. He even corrects Joe Scarborough's jocular comment about "Marxists." The left just gets funnier and funnier, now that they are on the path to being a coalition of basket-cases, welfare dependents, bureau-hacks, and mental jobs for the next twenty years. Now if we can just keep them out of power, they might prove to be quite entertaining.
John Stossel on "The Road to Serfdom"
John Stossel's program on Hayek's The Road to Serfdom is well worth watching. It is chock full of jaw-dropping facts and statistics, for example, 60% of Americans are net drains on the economy. There is also footage of film and stage adaptations of Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, quotes from F.A. Hayek, and an expose on how much unions really cost Americans.
VDH: Why Did Rome Fall—And Why Does It Matter Now?
Article [...]
Americanization
The point? We see something like this today. What made American culture boom through much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were traditional American values like the Protestant work ethic, family thrift, limited and stable government, equality of opportunity rather than result, lower taxes, personal freedom, opportunity for advancement and profit, and faith in American exceptionalism.
But the cloning and spreading of this system after WWII (“globalization”) did two things: literally billions of non-Westerners adopted the Western mode of production and began, in economic terms, becoming far more productive in creating valuable manufacturing goods, food, and exporting previously unknown or untapped natural resources; in addition, the vast rise in population added billions to the world’s productive work force. [...]
Today, the “poor” as I see them daily at Wal-Mart and Food-4-Less in Selma (a poor town in a poor county in poor central California) buy blue-ray DVD players, have to buy food-stamp subsidized sirloin rather than rib-eye (as I can attest watching 5 carts ahead of me in line tonight), and drive used 2000 Tahoes and 2001 Yukons rather 2010 Honda Accords. Government subsidies for housing, food, transportation, etc., coupled with cheap Chinese and Indian imported consumer goods, have for a time been substituted for the old manufacturing jobs or resource-based work (e.g., we don’t make steel, we increasingly curtail farming, we don’t drill, etc.). In other words, we are enjoying a lifestyle undreamed of by our grandparents who had values quite different from our own — a result of globalization, advances in technology, and massive borrowing and debt.
The Tab
But as in the case of Rome, there is a price for all these sudden riches. Just as the Iberians, and Libyans, and Thracians were hungrier and more enterprising than Italians back in the bay of Naples, so too we, the beneficiaries of this wealth, lost the values that were at its heart, in a way that the Indians, Chinese, and others have not — yet. Our youth in schools are not so excited by the notion of creating 100 new nuclear power plants, creating new mountain reservoirs, building new railroads and highways, or eager to rebuild the steel industry, or dreaming of increasing food production or eager to mine more ores. Instead, the emphasis in our schools is more on race/class/gender engineering, regulation, redistribution, etc, all of which in classical terms is not necessarily wealth creation.
We are now borrowing nearly $2 trillion a year to do things like ensure the 84-year old has a hip replacement — nearly half of it from the Chinese where 400 million have never been to a Westernized doctor. We spend $45,000 to incarcerate the felon in California, to meet utopian court-ordered mandates. As imperial Romans, we are felt to be owed a standard of living, even as our own daily habits would no longer necessarily translate into such largess, even as those on the periphery have learned what made America so wealthy from 1950 to 1990. [...]
A State of Mind
The strange thing is that these wild swings in civilization are at their bases psychological: decline is one of choice rather than necessity. Plague or lead poisoning or famine did not destroy Rome. We could balance our budget tomorrow without a great deal of sacrifice; we could eliminate 10% worth of government spending that is not essential; we could create our own energy with massive nuclear power investment, and more extraction of gas, oil, and coal. We could instill a tragic rather than therapeutic world view that would mean more responsibilities rather than endlessly more rights. We could do this all right — but too many feel such medicine is worse than the malady, and so we probably won’t and can’t. An enjoyable slow decline is apparently preferable to a short, but painful rethinking and rebirth.
Cutting Capital Gains Taxes Raises Revenues and The Left's Laffer of a Counter-Argument
[The American Spectator]
The Plague of Left-Wing Propaganda
[...] On a recent broadcast of the Larry Kudlow Show on CNBC, Art Laffer politely sat through an infantile lecture from Michael Linden, Associate Director for Tax and Budget Policy for the Center, claiming that Laffer had been "long discredited" in his argument that cuts in capital gains tax rates produce higher revenues.
But the truth is that over the past 40 years, every time capital gains tax rates have been cut, revenues have increased, and every time capital gains tax rates have been increased, revenues have declined. [More]
Since the government can print as much money as it likes, and because it is clearly demonstrated that taxes destroy wealth creation, one can only assume that the government taxes us for the hell of it. By putting the invisible yoke of tax withholding and confiscation around our necks, that is how they incrementally prep us for serfdom. The effect of taxation, regulation, and criminalization of every sphere of life is psychological demoralization of the individual and the steady breaking of the American people's will to resist. But the gig is coming to an end, and if the statists think that they've seen the worst of the fury of the American people, just wait until this false recovery fades away and Americans and their children are stuck with the bill for rampant political corruption, wasteful spending, and more Keynesian pipe dreams.
The Plague of Left-Wing Propaganda
[...] On a recent broadcast of the Larry Kudlow Show on CNBC, Art Laffer politely sat through an infantile lecture from Michael Linden, Associate Director for Tax and Budget Policy for the Center, claiming that Laffer had been "long discredited" in his argument that cuts in capital gains tax rates produce higher revenues.
But the truth is that over the past 40 years, every time capital gains tax rates have been cut, revenues have increased, and every time capital gains tax rates have been increased, revenues have declined. [More]
Since the government can print as much money as it likes, and because it is clearly demonstrated that taxes destroy wealth creation, one can only assume that the government taxes us for the hell of it. By putting the invisible yoke of tax withholding and confiscation around our necks, that is how they incrementally prep us for serfdom. The effect of taxation, regulation, and criminalization of every sphere of life is psychological demoralization of the individual and the steady breaking of the American people's will to resist. But the gig is coming to an end, and if the statists think that they've seen the worst of the fury of the American people, just wait until this false recovery fades away and Americans and their children are stuck with the bill for rampant political corruption, wasteful spending, and more Keynesian pipe dreams.
Obama the Transformative Figure
Let's not forget his lowering of sea levels, moving beyond partisan politics, and ushering in of a post-racial America. But at least he was able to reverse global warming.
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