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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| The One Wrong Premise at the Center of American Politics Today |
| 2019-02-18 |
| Sarah Hoyt via Instapundit With President Trump declaring that America is not now and will never be a socialist country, the masks have come off. I remember when "Britons never, never, never shall be slaves." was taken for granted. Today singing "Rule Britannia" on English street will, probably, get you arrested. [PJMedia] All the establishment left that a mere ten years ago would have denied strenuously that they were in any way, shape, or form socialists, are now defending their precious dream of socialism (really, communism, but the difference is academic and like the difference between male and female penguins, it matters only to themselves. Let’s remember the USSR only ever called itself socialist). Occasional Cortex had to come out and talk about how socialism is getting more popular all the time (someone told her it was to die for) and the Washington Post (democracy dies in darkness while we hold a pillow over her head) said Trump will lose his "war" on socialism (just like we were always going to lose till communism, till the wall came down. Unexpectedly! As far as the left was concerned). This means communism and socialism (100 million dead. Why not try again?) has been much in the minds of most of my contacts both on the right and left, and I’ve been reading testimonials on our side and people pointing out it’s not Trump’s war on socialism. It’s our war on socialism. It’s merely a relief to have a president who, unlike Mr. Obama, doesn’t think the ridiculous and abominable system is inevitable. Thing is, because of it being in the news, I’ve heard an awful lot about why communism and socialism (its pink, pale cousin who causes death by stagnation and piecemeal instead of the honking big mass graves of communism) don’t work. To be fair there is so much wrong with both systems it’s almost like they were dreamed up by a reclusive and bookish man who had never worked a day in his life and in fact had no concept of what this "working for a living" was, much less of how the economy worked. ...For the purposes of this essay, though, socialism and communism are the same; they're just at different stages of the same cancer. As such, the flaw at their center is the same. I followed a link on Facebook to what is generally a very good post. Apparently, for those not willing to follow the link, someone was asked why the acrimony between right and left, if both love their country. In the comments, the author of the post above got into a discussion with someone who claimed to have been on the right and turned left. This gentleman claimed to have turned left because right-wingers don’t care that the world is unfair. They know that some humans have more than others and that success is largely a matter of luck (this is truer in academic and artistic fields) and (according to the commenter) "people on the right don’t care." When he started caring and decided people were "entitled" to food and medical care, etc., he became a leftist. (I would say rather that he became a complete lunatic, but that’s probably a matter of semantics.) The author of the piece linked above countered that, in fact, people on the right know that and care. But we know life is not and can never be made "fair." |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #5 That life could be made fair, lord |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2019-02-18 12:39 |
| #4 I read this and tried to see what was the ONE WRONG PREMISE but I couldn't identify it. There are many things wrong with socialism but it depends on what the socialist advocate thinks socialism is. |
| Posted by: lord garth 2019-02-18 12:00 |
| #3 Milton Friedman on spending: The 4 Ways Of Spending 1) Spend your own money on yourself. You will expect good value. 2) Spend your own money on somebody else. You won't care about value so much. 3) Spend somebody else’s money on yourself. You still won't care about value so much. 4) Spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. You won't care about value at all. |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2019-02-18 06:58 |
| #2 The statistics show that conservatives give both more money and more of their personal time to charity, and both to individual charitable efforts as well as formal ones, yes. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2019-02-18 06:22 |
| #1 "people on the right don’t care." IIRC the studies show the 'right' gives more to charities than the 'left'. The Left simply uses the public treasury ie 'other peoples money' to do their 'charity'. When you use your own money, you take care on how effective the money is employed and that there are results. When you use other people's money, you don't care about how it is used or if it is effective. It's about feelings not about results. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2019-02-18 05:41 |