The enduring appeal of extreme leftism
[NOTE: We had a discussion here the other day on why leftism, despite its failures, remains so appealing to so many people. I thought it might be time to revisit this post from 2014 on that topic. So here it is, with a tiny bit of editing.]
Communism/Socialism is an idea whose time has always come, ever-fresh and ever-new. It keeps rearing its ugly head wearing a new mask, like some vampire returning in a new guise. But can’t we finally drive a stake through its wretched heart?
In 2014 (but still quite relevant today, if not more so), Robert Stacy McCain wrote an essay describing the latest renaissance of the idea that persists in the face of all empirical evidence to the contrary, and which was correctly critiqued by the economist Ludwig von Mises not long after the Soviets came to power:
In his classic work Socialism, Mises explained that the attempt to replace the market system with central economic planning could not succeed, because the planners could not possibly have the information necessary to make all the decisions which, in a market economy, are made by individuals whose needs and desires are reflected in prices: “The problem of economic calculation is the fundamental problem of Socialism.”
“Everything brought forward in favour of Socialism during the last hundred years,” Mises wrote in 1922, “in thousands of writings and speeches, all the blood which has been spilt by the supporters of Socialism, cannot make Socialism workable. …. Socialist writers may continue to publish books about the decay of Capitalism and the coming of the socialist millennium; they may paint the evils of Capitalism in lurid colours and contrast with them an enticing picture of the blessings of a socialist society; their writings may continue to impress the thoughtless — but all this cannot alter the fate of the socialist idea.”
The rest of the McCain article is worth reading. My response is that this persistence of the idea of socialism/Communism despite evidence of its awfulness when put into practice in the real world should not be at all surprising. And I don’t think we’ll ever find the proper stake to drive into its still-beating heart, because the nature of this beast is that it represents an idea with strong appeal to a vast number of human beings. No amount of empirical or historical evidence can permanently teach enough people otherwise.
The rhetoric of Socialism/Communism has intrinsic appeal to certain groups of people and some members of each group are always likely to fall under its spell: the guilt-ridden wealthy and/or their even-more-guilt-ridden spawn, the poor who feel they’ve been screwed by society, the politically and economically naive intelligentsia who feel they know better than others, the religious and/or idealistic who want everyone to be loving and good and selfless, and those who just like the idea of power and control over others and plan to be the ones in charge.
Combine all that natural appeal with the undeniable propagandist skill of the left—including their willingness to lie in the most brazen manner—and you have an even greater effect. And then combine all of that with ignorance of history and economics, our culture’s reluctance to teach the young our good points and its eagerness to harp on our bad ones, and the fact that people only tend to really learn something through bitter and personal experience.
The wonder is that more people don’t believe that socialism/Commmunism is the answer to the world’s prayers, not that so many succumb to it in the first place. Never imagine that the fight, especially in the intellectual and educational and propaganda spheres, can be over. It would be too bad if each generation had to learn the lesson through personal suffering rather than in the realm of ideas.
Socialism is driven by childhood.
That’s why it keeps popping back up.
The over-aged child ( adult ) wishes to revisit the economic distribution of mom’s diner table.
Crudely, that’s IT.
Mom’s diner table simply does not scale up.
Socialism requires an all-seeing momma.
She doesn’t exist.
Mom takes an infinite amount of resources (food) from daddy and gives them to those in need — her babies.
That’s the heart of socialism.
grainy footage of a topless, hammered Bernie Sanders singing “This Land Is Your Land” in the Soviet Union blows them all out of the political shark-filled water.
https://forward.com/schmooze/418282/footage-of-shirtless-bernie-sanders-singing-drunkenly-with-soviets-in-88/
I think the empirical evidence that socialism doesn’t work – and not just “doesn’t work,” but is a really, really bad thing – doesn’t get through to socialists because of the nature of the empirical evidence. It’s people – people’s choices, people’s desires. Socialists do not believe that we are at the mercy of the forces of economics – it doesn’t arise out of the natural world, it’s entirely dependent on humans. Socialists believe that we can control people’s wants, needs, and decisions. They believe human nature is mutable. It doesn’t matter how much empirical evidence is shoved in their face because they believe we can change the processes that lead to those results.
I actually don’t think there’s much interest in occidental countries in state-owned industry or central planning. The loci where you see some interest is in badly governed states sitting on natural resource bonanzas (Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela prior to 1999) and places which have exceptionally bad political cultures (Greece, Argentina).
What you see instead is a political party which favors allocation of discretion to what Alvin Gouldner called ‘the New Class’ and Thos. Sowell called ‘the Anointed’ and a party which consists of an omnibus of people who object to one or another aspect of that. This dispensation has more of an affinity for mercantile regulation, redistribution, state planning, and state-owned industry, but that’s an ancillary feature of the whole package.
Socialism is a lie too complicated for the average to know..
and so, can be anything to anyone at anytime they need it
it works because in its revolutionary form it promises a home and normalcy for people who, through usually their own desires, behaviors and more, dont really have one in the average center public… the fronts…
first tell women they are broken victims..
then reward them for being broken victims…
then reward them for attacking the target…
then build power in exchange for taking positions…
then make more normal the more abnormal, so they have a place
then protect them while attacking the same kind who are in opposition
these become loyal for the same rason a boss who hires a incompetent and protects them gets a sychophant who knows they would become what once things went back
in a normal society, criminals get put in jail
in a soviet society, criminals were let out and became officers of the law, guards in prisons, and what amounted to the brutal class… their forbidden desires were given an outlet, and so, made happy and normal
it is a farce… even soviets knew it… everyone at the top knows it
the only people who think otherwise are those just below them
its all laid out, you can read it, and yet, you credit alinsky for packaging up what operatives did and used so that anyone who reads the book could be an operative without any connection, and act on their own, like a czech dropping a bolt “accidently” into a tank gearbox…
[edited for length by n-n]
The Socialists claimed they could create heaven on earth and people wanted to believe it. The Socialists were the sequel to the tower of babel. When the humans discovered they couldn’t build a tower to heaven, the socialists claimed no tower was needed because they knew how to create heaven on earth. Just give them enough money and power and soon you would be living in the socialist workers paradise.
http://www.heavenonearthdocumentary.com/resources/commentary_socialism_vs_religion_07-14-02.txt
“The Socialists claimed they could create heaven on earth . . .” [Ray @ 12:39 pm]
Utopia! We always forget that utopia comes from Greek words for “not” and “place” and means “no-place”. Those who support socialism consistently fail to realize that utopia doesn’t exist because it can’t.
Socialism is self-defeating. It deals with the redistribution of existing wealth and eschews any future wealth-generating sources. Thus, Margaret Thatcher’s accurate observation about eventually running out of other peoples money.
In a follow up this timely comment, “The Morning Rant,” by CBD over at Ace of spades HQ sums it up, I think rather nicely:
Link: www. ace.mu.nu
The most basic reason for people falling for Communism?
They want free stuff, someone to take care of them, and to fix the inevitable and eternal iniquities and injustices of life and living.
Life should be “fair, ” they think, and it isn’t–never has been–but they think that some ideology/some people have the secret–the magic wand–that will fix everything.
I note that some of the Soviet Jews who immigrated to Israel eventually returned to the Soviet Union because–they said in interviews–they just could not stand having to make all sorts of individual decisions that they were required to make living in Israel, but which were made for them by the State in the U.S.S.R.
I note that some of the Soviet Jews who immigrated to Israel eventually returned to the Soviet Union
Very few. The Jewish population in Russia today is about 200,000. Forty years ago there were 1.7 million Jews in the Soviet Union.
They want free stuff, someone to take care of them, and to fix the inevitable and eternal iniquities and injustices of life and living.
No, they got the idea in their head that someone stole from them.
The hard core lefties that I know seem to have a permanent chip on their shoulder looking for situations where they can be outraged and express their anger and what little humor they have is a warped derision chortle when their opposition stables and falls. They seem to live in a world where it is always too hot or too cold, things are not fair, they know they know more than the regular people and they never have a good day, in fact telling them to have a good day is an insult.
Second thing, a planned economy that does not respond to consumer demand is a situation I encountered when I was stationed in German in the 1960’s and the only source for black socks that I wanted to buy was the US Government run PX in Fürth, a huge store. They would run out of black socks within less than a week of each new shipment coming in. One day I asked if I could talk to the person who placed the orders and I was introduced to the woman in that position. I asked her if she could increase the number of socks in black and mentioned she might want to decrease the number of other colors that were in over abundance and I was told, “We order the exact right number of socks each time you all buy too many so it’s you fault and not ours.” And that’s the way a non consumer economy works, no penalty for being wrong.
“No, they got the idea in their head that someone stole from them.” [Art Deco @ 1:29 pm]
As Winston Churchill noted one of the founding tenets of socialism is envy. Socialists want you looking up the economic ladder in envy of all above you. The dirty little secret that they don’t tell you, though, is that there is someone below you on the economic ladder looking up in envy at you. It was none other than Thomas Sowell who noted that people speak of greedy industrialists and robber barons as if greed somehow magically entrances people to send them money.
Furthermore, socialists perceive someone as getting wealthy at the expense of others; i.e., you “have” because someone else is “denied”. This is a blatant falsehood. What did Bill Gates deny me in order to become wealthy? Mark Zuckerburg (regardless of one’s feelings about Facebook) or Jeff Bezos? In fact each of them provided something that enhanced life rather than detracted from it. There is a reason that Amazon.com is contributing to the disappearance of brick-and-mortar stores; it’s easier to shop and order online than to go out. Even the much reviled John D. Rockefeller became the richest man in the world by providing quality kerosene shipped by rail across the country. He added possibly billions of productive hours nationwide to the lives of even the poorest Americans.
Yes, Churchill hit the nail on the head 70 years ago:
“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” — 28 May 1948.
There are two main camps in the communism support system.
First, you have the naive, who only have a peripheral understanding of communism (a child-like understanding) and who support it mainly because it “makes sense for everyone” and makes them “good people”.
Second, you have the evil and power-hungry who actually know exactly what communism is all about but are willing to gamble and strive to be one of the few that has supreme control over the many.
In the first camp, you have the likes of Hollywood celebrities and politicians like AOC who view the world through a “good vs evil” lens with themselves positioned as its moral compass, but who constantly babble crude whitewashed communism talking points.
In the second camp, you have the more nefarious, mainly white, politicians who are more or less careful about overtly stating their communism bona fides.
After “The Grapes of Wrath” movie came out, the Soviets played it in their theaters, the better to illustrate the cruelty of American capitalism to workers, then realized they had made a terrible mistake.
Soviet workers watching the film were agog that mere American tenant farmers could afford to own trucks!
Of course it appeals to the uneducated. These days that would be, somewhat strangely, college students and those who have recently received Certificates of Attendance ( diplomas )
They all want free unicorns who poop chocolate ice cream.
So sad.
When people talk about ‘fairness’ they have little idea how abstract this can really be. Most of the time this only apply to how they are affected by others and their actions.
Four students with two different studying styles. Two crack the books and cram with one aces a test and the other fails. The other two seem to minimally touch their books with one acing the test and the other fails. So which of the students was treated unfairly by the test?
The first two students may think it is unfair that the third seemed to do nothing and aced it while they had to do so much work and only one passed and the other failed.
Socialism would have all four pass with a C because that would be ‘fair’ (equality of outcomes), even though one did nothing and didn’t pass the test at all. In reality, his grade elevation would be unfair to the other three.
A long time ago, I worked in a plant and joined the union. I discovered most of the union’s work was spent keeping the incompetent and lazy workers employed instead of getting them removed and better workers brought in. The union was making me and others work harder to keep the idiots employed. I certainly thought that was unfair though the idiots didn’t.
There is talk about ‘paying their fair share of taxes’ without truly defining what this means. Most of the time, I really hate when politicians talk of ‘fairness’ since I see this as a dishonest way of really being unfair to people like the student analogy and my union experience.
“Of course it appeals to the uneducated.These days that would be, somewhat strangely, college students”
Now, be nice and stop dissing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. When I see her I am reminded of the finale of the movie “The Wizard of Oz” where the fake wizard tells the scarecrow that he can’t give him a brain but he can give him a diploma.
As mentioned, people want free stuff.
“There is no free lunch” — while this economic law is true, everybody has had a few lunches that were paid for with Other People’s Money.
Most want more such “free lunches”.
Life, and reality, are unfair. But unfair is not the same as unjust.
Still, most simple people, and many others, feel that if something is unfair against them, there is some kind of injustice. The system is unjust.
“Justice” is what justifies force & violence. If normal, inevitable unfairness is, instead, relabeled as injustice, there will be natural attempts to rectify it, in the name of justice.
There is also, clear in history, many actual injustices of the rich and powerful against the weak, either physically (like women) or technologically (like non-Europeans for the last 500 years). Many times the result of true injustice is similar to the reality of unfairness — somebody dies, or loses an arm or a leg.
It’s easy to thus claim that it’s all a form of injustice, which then justifies socialism, as a form of justice. The good desire for justice is badly channeled against unfairness.
None know how to stop this, nor do I — but I advocate a Job Guarantee, where the gov’t pushes private employers to hire more workers, so that everybody who is willing to work has a job. I’m against UBI (Universal Basic Income) for all, without work, but that’s a dumb idea many socialists are supporting now.
I’m also moving towards advocating tax changes such that the rich get richer more slowly than the median worker gets richer. Our economists need to tune what they measure better — like the employment rate (about 62%) being more important than the unemployment rate (now low at 3.9%, but this is based on those “looking for work”, so it’s a more fuzzy number).
OldTexan…”They would run out of black socks within less than a week of each new shipment coming in”….I remember riding Amtrak many years ago, hot dogs were usually available in the cafe car but not on Friday. The guy explained that a lot more kids rode the train on Fridays, and they ordered a lot of hot dogs…
It is not just governments and quasi-governmental organizations like Amtrak that have this problem..chain-store inventory management seems to often run on a ‘push’ basis such that people and systems at headquarters decide what a particular store needs and send it to them automatically. There are stories about snow blowers showing up at stores in south Florida.
I expect that the current vogue for ‘Big Data’ will result in a lot more of this sort of thing.
The attraction of central planning is not limited to socialist ideas about national policy; it has an impact, and usually a malign one, on competitive capitalist businesses as well.
Happened to hear a few minutes of Senator Kamala Harris’ speech a day or two ago and, in the brief snippet I heard, Harris was, apparently, promising free stuff for every possible constituency she could pander to.
Since Harris opened her campaign for President with a video which ended with her giving some sort of wacky, fantasy-derived “Wakanda” salute, then, looking into the screen and saying “Wakanda Foreover,” I think that Harris should actually run for Queen of Wakanda, and that that role would be a far better fit for her.
Was this some sort of ploy by Harris, intended to capture the interest of young Blacks who might have seen this recent fantasy film “Black Panther,” about a secret, hidden, high tech Black African kingdom–a mix of traditional African culture combined with technology far superior to that of the rest of the (white) world?
Was this the equivalent of someone–when Star Trek was at the height of it’s popularity–giving the Vulcan V hand sign and saying “Live Long and Prosper,” with the intent of capturing the interest of all the voting age Star Trek fans?
Whatever it was, or was intended to be, it just looked nuts to me, and disqualifying if what people are looking for is a serious candidate.
Ray (@ 4:01 pm),
Nice catch on the Wizard of Oz
“Life, and reality, are unfair.” [Tom Grey @ 4:08]
I would tend to disagree with that statement. Life is just life; it simply “is”. IMO the concept of fairness/unfairness is a human perception which we project onto life and like all human beings it is usually very subjective. What one person sees as unfair another sees as inconsequential. Is it unfair that one particular wildebeast it falls under the lion’s claw rather than another? Is it fair that one neighbor’s child gets cancer or that another tragically loses a child? Is it fair that David Hogg matriculates to Harvard while other, perhaps more deserving, students are consigned to state universities? Is it fair that one person who rarely buys a ticket wins a large lottery jackpot and others, who have been buying tickets for years have never won?
A telling (lottery) example is in Jim Carry’s film Bruce Almighty where he answers the prayers of all the people praying to win the lottery by pressing the “yes to all” button. Everyone wins; then everyone complains that they only won something like $1.34 each.
As I rhetorically asked above, what has Jeff Bezos denied me to amass his fortune?
From “A Canticle for Liebowitz” –
“The closer men came to perfecting for themselves a paradise, the more impatient they seemed to become with it, and with themselves as well. They made a garden of pleasure, and became progressively more miserable with it as it grew in richness and power and beauty; for then, perhaps, it was easier for them to see that something was missing in the garden, some tree or shrub that would not grow.”
“When the world was in darkness and wretchedness, it could believe in perfection and yearn for it. But when the world became bright with reason and riches, it began to sense the narrowness of the needle’s eye, and that rankled for a world no longer willing to believe or yearn. Well, they were going to destroy it again, were they—this garden Earth, civilized and knowing, to be torn apart again that Man might hope again in wretched darkness.”
A large part of the problem is that, to those who don’t know much about economics, it sounds so “fair” and “compassionate.” In practice it’s never actually fair or compassionate.
“… so it’s a more fuzzy number).
Just what we need, a 5 year plan.
On reading parker….
.
Yes … 5 is not a fuzzy number.
A computer with a corrupted operating system cannot cure itself. So too with humanity’s corrupted nature.
Demagogues, criminals, the mentally ill and those who support the Left are simply human beings whose psychological nature is corrupted to the point where they are unable/unwilling to think/act in accordance with the external reality within which we all exist.
By definition, they “outlaw” themselves from healthy societies. Societal health being directly related to the society’s degree of alignment with reality.
As far as I can tell, Communisum has only been installed by and maintained by violence, no people has chosen it voluntarily. It won’t happen in the US because the vanguard of the proletariat will be badly outnumbered by people with guns who are willing and able to use them.
Socialism is a different story and, at least in Europe, is a continuation of feudalism, the nobility and the peasants. These days it’s called the government and the people but it’s a distinction without a difference.
Art Deco on January 29, 2019 at 1:29 pm at 1:29 pm said:
They want free stuff, someone to take care of them, and to fix the inevitable and eternal iniquities and injustices of life and living.
No, they got the idea in their head that someone stole from them.
* * *
Embrace the power of “and” —
Art, directing a little sarcasm at would be socialists and those not paying attention, remarks:
Art, read C.S. Lewis? What?
Speaking of whom, while granting his great critical sense and considerable intellect, it’s nonetheless remarkable how “prophetic” he seems. Then one realizes that he was dealing with cultural issues in England generally, and in the C. of E. and in the universities particularly, which have only filtered down to the middle class in the U.S. more recently.
Still, the guy had a way of framing things with an incisiveness and penetration, that continues to impress generations of readers. Myself included.
[Now Art will correct me and say he actually meant C.I. Lewis the American logician and pragmatist.]
Actually, socialism (ie communism) works quiet well. From each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs works very well indeed.
That is until it comes time to swamp out the sewers of Moscow.
Then you need the secret police.
After that not so much…..
Paul in Boston,
Socialism gradually and unavoidably evolves into Communism. Socialism is unsustainable without ever increasing degrees of coercion. The EU has and is demonstrating that inherent reality.
No less an ‘expert’ than Lenin himself agreed; “Communism is the goal of socialism.”
A perfect example of how it happens in incremental steps is our new democrat controlled House’s first proposed legislation: H.R. 1
“Exclusive: Conservatives Unite Against H.R. 1, ‘Ultimate Fantasy of the Left” https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/01/28/conservatives-unite-against-h-r-1-ultimate-fantasy-of-the-left/
I found one of my favorite editorials on the mythology of Marx and Marxism at The Economist, back when they did quality journalism. It’s has both great tongue-in-cheek wit and educational value.
Most of the wit is in the first half, but here is a nice longish quote from the second half.
_______
About Neo’s quoted section from von Mises ““The problem of economic calculation is the fundamental problem of Socialism,” I several thoughts.
It was great in it’s day and true of the Soviet Union. The calculation problem needs enough and the correct data input, and then the correct processing of that data. (Did you hear today that your iPhone can transmit live microphone and video data without your knowledge to another casual user?)
So today vast data can be transmitted on a person by person basis, and computer systems with hundreds of exabytes of data storage and hundreds of petaflops of compute power. The harder part is that this “economic compute system” must be correctly programmed, but it’s probably doable.
It’s actually rather scary that today this is all possible. But do we want the lack of autonomy it would entail? Would we trust the controllers to optimize for the goals that we want, or the ones that they want? Look at the Soviet progression of leaders. Trotsky, Lenin, and then Stalin. I don’t know much of the historical detail, but Trotsky was the most ideologically pure, Lenin was a tyrant, and Stalin a nightmare tyrant. Why did Lenin have to kill Trotsky in far-off Mexico?
It’s not that today we couldn’t centrally control an economy, but that it’s too much power in a few hands.
Aside from von Mises’ dated point about the impossibility of central economic control, is his other point that they, the Marxists, don’t even understand correct economic information questions let alone the answers. Marx, in his effort to spin a “just” quantitative and scientific economic theory, came up with the “labor value” pricing system.
In this system, one just adds up the number of minutes or hours of labor required to create the widget you are about to buy, apply the correct multiplier, and presto the price of the widget is determined. So supply and demand pricing is eliminated as an unjust trick of the ruling class. Marxists fail to understand that dynamic pricing is really a super effective data transmission system.
Is there not enough gasoline at your local station? The price goes up, and suddenly hundreds of low productivity oil wells are turned on and there more oil. But not if Jimmy Carter controlled the price of oil and gasoline to be fixed.
Why is socialism/communism attractive? Too many people who want a womb with a view.
Somewhat sidewise to the topic, but Sarah Hoyt’s blog is also tangentially about socialism / leftism, and this comment was intriguing to me.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2019/01/29/on-being-persona-non-grata-blast-from-the-past-from-june-2017/#comment-582234
Tommy Jay,
I believe you’re a bit confused on your history.
Lenin came first, Trotsky and Stalin were Lenin’s ‘lieutenants’. They were contemporaries and after Lenin died, Stalin and Trotsky vied for control of the party. Trotsky lost the political battle and fled to Mexico. Stalin had him tracked down and killed.
Also, as economic principles cannot become obsolete, von Mises’ point about the impossibility of successful central control of an economy cannot become “dated”.
There are far more chaotic, random variables in a free market economy than even a quantum computer running the most sophisticated algorythms could account for… an economy can be directed in the sense of having a goal, ala WWII but it can’t be controlled… anymore than you can herd cats.
When I was a young mother, a long time ago, mid-eighties, I was quite involved with my Lutheran church. Taught Sunday School, met for women’s fellowship and bible study, etc. They hosted a series of evening “classes” on depression, the thesis of which was that pretty much if anything is going wrong with your life, you’re a victim of depression and it’s not your fault. You’re absolved from all your sins because life is too hard and as a result, you’re depressed, and that’s a diagnosis. It felt so f***ed up to me, that I just left that church. And it was just a normal, mainstream one at which I had been a congregant, had been married there, and my kids had been baptized there! I think it’s just a salve for people who don’t want to take responsibility. And I was so young, and not in the best situation, marriage-wise and otherwise, that it was quite seductive to think that all of my problems were someone else’s fault, or at least not my own. I think this is the thing that draws people to socialism. It’s easy. I know this is not a ground-breaking epiphany, just telling how I was almost drawn there, too.
AesopFan,
Reading Sarah Hoyt’s “Every leftist knows that zhe is the one who can do socialism right.”
Reminded me of this observation: A fanatic is someone who does what they know the Lord would do, if only the Lord knew all of the facts of the case… 😉
Taking responsibility for yourself means having no one and nothing else to blame. It means having to live with yourself. It means having to accept the bad as well as the good in yourself.
And it’s the only way to grow and to mature and gain wisdom. And no amount of intelligence can substitute for that process. It’s about being honest with yourself and that’s hard when we don’t like what we see in the mirror.
Given all of our frailties… God’s repeated promise of love for us is the only thing that can allow us to withstand the burden when we stare into our inner mirror and see the depth of our imperfection.
And that is why the liberal left* is so filled with hate, they have rejected the only thing that can save them because it requires looking honestly into “the mirror” at themselves, at facing themselves as they are… for forgiveness is dependent upon repentence and repentence requires admission of being in a sinful state from which we cannot free ourselves. (only one of the crucified thieves got into heaven for in his silence, the other refused to repent)
Incapable/unwilling to take that step, rather they desperately want others to think they are “good people”, which is why “virtue signaling” is such an empirical imperative for them. And why deceit and lying are so much a part of them and so easily justified with empty rationalizations.
The latest evidence being their now wanting to take out “so help me God” from the end of their Congressional oath.
It’s not really ‘religion’ intruding they object to, in their ‘heart of hearts’ it’s being answerable to a higher moral standard and fear of being held to account for their actions after they’ve “shuffled off their mortal coil”.
So they tell themselves that there’s no God and it’s all just random chance… or it’s an impersonal “force” to which no accountability is owed. While they whistle past the graveyard, dreaming of the utopia they support the creation of… which will finally prove their worthiness.
And that’s truly… SAD.
*not the hard core Left I think, their motivation is their insatiable lust for power and control. They hate us for standing in their way, rather than for what we stand for…
Geoffrey,
I wish you would not make interesting comments which already require one to read them, and also inconsiderately include the sort of link that arouses a Knead to Read when I should already be asleep, as you did above in your link to Breitbart on H.R.1.
/end thank-you ;>))
.
In particular, not to go O/T or anything, but Breitbart has
ana couple ofthree pieces up that probably will keep me from my beauty nap tonight. Namely, that the Kochs have joined forces with the Silicon Titans and other Fortune-500 firms, and the ACLU, on not limiting immigration, on (possibly) amnesty, and certainly on Never-Trump-in-2020.Billionaire Kochs Unite Plutocrats for Amnesty, Vow Not to Back Trump in 2020
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/01/29/billionaire-kochs-unite-plutocrats-for-amnesty-vow-not-to-back-trump-in-2020/
White House Aides Ask Business for Immigration Wish List
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/01/29/white-house-aides-ask-business-for-immigration-wish-list/
Article opens thus:
Zuckerberg’s Lobbyist: ‘100 Percent’ Trump’s Base Will Back Amnesty’
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2019/01/29/zuckerbergs-lobbyist-100-percent-trumps-base-will-back-amnesty/
.
I don’t consider Breitbart all that reliable, but that’s true of all the news sources and pundits out there. Two of the headlines include “amnesty,” but according to Axios (and are they reliable), Jared Kushner denies it.
So … there we all are, but where are we?
AesopFan,
I must chastise you as well as Geoffrey, for keeping me up even later reading Sarah Hoyt’s piece, which compelled me to leave an appreciative comment there, and then was further forced to follow the link to Powerline given by the commenter above.
Sickeningly worth reading: Per John Hinderaker, in his posting “The Left Strikes Where It Hurts–Debate,” he tells us that
— https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/01/the-left-strikes-where-it-hurts-debate.php
The quoted paragraph is from a piece in the Daily Wire, entitled “High School Students Disqualified From Debate After Quoting Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson” (I can definitely hear the two-minute-haters hissing at the mention of these two noted rightwingextremistracistsexistwhitemalehomophobes), at
https://www.dailywire.com/news/42751/high-school-students-disqualified-debate-after-ashe-schow?utm_source=shapironewsletter-ae&utm_medium=email&utm_content=012919-news&utm_campaign=modelnames
Mr. Hinderaker has added a good deal of his own reactions to this, um, c**p. Worth the reading, if you’ve the stomach for it.
Each new generation discards the lessons of the previous one and must relearn via their own dreadful experience.
My wife and I took a vacation that included travel through the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The local guides told us their stories of when the Soviet Union fell and of their lives before then,
The greatest sorrow they have is that when they tell their offspring, who were born after the Soviet Union fell, of their experiences — their children just roll their eyes and think that socialism is the best system. The new generation must experience the sorrow for themselves before they realize that their parents were telling them the truth.
Geoffrey – so much truth in your comment.
This really is a neo-pagan revanchist movement, a revolt against the Judeo-Christian definition of personhood that you described.
And many fools think they can keep the fruits – including political freedom – while severing the roots. This is why the Left targets seemingly non-political areas of life such as the family… It’s a battle between 2 opposing world views.
Even in the 40 years of wandering right after the revelation at Sinai, the people were swayed by fear, lust, and envy to rebel against G-d and Moses. These same tools are used by the modern Left.
In short “Models versus reality”. While models are useful in some sense, so is the desire to have equality. The latter should propel us, individually to do good. It is a monster when centralized. Models are good in describing reality but monstrous when defining reality. What is there not to love about “benevolent dictatorship” in theory.
What’s not to love about him is that he still holds your life in his hands, instead of leaving it in yours, where it belongs.
Some dictators may not be all that dictatorial, as long as you don’t make very noticeable ways when your “I will” conflicts with there “You must,” but they still hold the power of life and death over you, should they choose to exercise it.
They hosted a series of evening “classes” on depression, the thesis of which was that pretty much if anything is going wrong with your life, you’re a victim of depression and it’s not your fault. You’re absolved from all your sins because life is too hard and as a result, you’re depressed, and that’s a diagnosis.
I attended a lecture some years ago by a psychiatrist who had written a book about antidepressants and how they are marketed. I’ve forgotten his name but he wrote several books in the 1990s. He showed a series of slides of ads for anti-depressant drugs. The early ones showed women (always women) who looked depressed. Gradually the images shifted as drug treatment for depression became drug treatment for life. By the end of the series of slides, antidepressant ads showed pretty happy women.
He had been working in Canada at a university but, as his work became more opposed to drug therapy for depression, his position was eliminated and he went back to Britain.
Julie near Chicago,
Rather than an obstacle to a good nights sleep, see it as an opportunity in developing self-discipline… 😉
As for the Kochs, the GOPe has always been in favor of unrestricted immigration, at least in the short term its good for business, in the long run they’re killing their market (middle class). The worship of Mammon can never be eliminated, only reduced, as long as mankind remains ‘fallen’ i.e. a “corrupted operating system”.
Kushner is a foolish young man.
Zuckerberg’s lobbiest is full of bullpucky and its not even skillful propaganda.
I can’t imagine a fair contest in today’s school debate. Demonizing Shapiro & Peterson is nothing new; “When the debate is lost, the loser resorts to slander.” Socrates 470-399 BC
” I cannot teach anyone anything, I can only make them think.
Let him that would move the world, first move himself.
If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it.” Socrates
Edward,
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant… I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.” Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain
Ben David,
Yes, as another commenter aptly put it, they are “cutting off the limb upon which they are sitting”.
DEEBEE,
The “desire to have equality” is an indication of a failure to grasp and accept reality. Even equality of opportunity is a chimera and equality before the law as well. They are societal ideals to be strived for while understanding that given their cost, they would be undesirable to achieve.
Ben david on January 30, 2019 at 5:37 am at 5:37 am said:
And many fools think they can keep the fruits – including political freedom – while severing the roots.
* * *
This is very true, and I wonder if the same cognitive dissonance propelled the ancient Israelites into disaster — whenever they ceased to obey the Law and listen to the Prophets — because they had quit recognizing the source of their prosperity.
Geoffrey, Julie – so much to read, so little time!
Julie near Chicago on January 30, 2019 at 4:11 am at 4:11 am said:
Sickeningly worth reading: Per John Hinderaker, in his posting “The Left Strikes Where It Hurts–Debate,”
* * *
The most maddening thing to me (per John and the commenters) is that this is not a new development; the debasement of debate-ment has been going on for decades, apparently.
However, it could not succeed without the willing collusion of the adult judges, who should simply disqualify the teams which DO NOT perform according to the established, and very long-standing, rules of the game, and do not.
Pretty good example of the Left as a whole.
Edward on January 30, 2019 at 4:32 am at 4:32 am said:
…The new generation must experience the sorrow for themselves before they realize that their parents were telling them the truth.
* * *
Another enduring example that the Old Testament histories were grounded in reality.
kalneva on January 30, 2019 at 12:46 am at 12:46 am said:
..Mike K on January 30, 2019 at 9:42 am at 9:42 am said:
..
I attended a lecture some years ago by a psychiatrist who had written a book about antidepressants and how they are marketed. I’ve forgotten his name but he wrote several books in the 1990s. He showed a series of slides of ads for anti-depressant drugs. The early ones showed women (always women) who looked depressed. Gradually the images shifted as drug treatment for depression became drug treatment for life. By the end of the series of slides, antidepressant ads showed pretty happy women.
* * *
Which illuminates somewhat the discussion about the potential cancer cure, and if the pharma-medical complex will allow it to come to fruition (if indeed it can).