Posted on 01/21/2008 9:02:44 PM PST by jazusamo
Most of the horrors of the 20th century — of which there were many — would not have been possible without demagoguery or misleading propaganda.
Most people have too much of a sense of decency and too much common sense to have gone along with those horrors unless someone found a way to turn off their thinking and turn on their emotions.
That is how Jim Jones led hundreds of people to their deaths at Jonestown. On a much larger scale, that is how Lenin created a regime of mass murder in Russia, how Hitler did the same thing in Germany and Mao in China.
Yet we seem to be no more aware of a need to be on guard against demagoguery today, in the 21st century, than those people who looked up with open-mouthed adulation at Adolf Hitler in the 1930s and at numerous other demagogues, large and small, around the world throughout the turbulent 20th century.
Many people find it thrilling that the mantra of "change" is ringing out across the land during this election year. But let's do what the politicians hope that we will never do — stop and think.
It is doubtful whether there is a single human being in this entire country who is 100 percent satisfied with everything that is going on. In other words, everybody is for change.
The real difference between liberals and conservatives is in which specific things they want to change, and in what way.
Milton Friedman was the leading conservative thinker of his time but he wanted to radically change the Federal Reserve, the school system, and the tax system, among other things.
Everybody is for change. They differ on the specifics. Uniting people behind the thoughtless mantra of "change" means asking for a blank check in exchange for rhetoric. That deal has been made many times in many places — and millions of people have lived to regret it.
It is not too much to ask politicians to talk specifics, instead of trying to sweep us along, turning off our minds and turning on our emotions, with soaring rhetoric.
Optimists might even hope for some logical consistency and hard facts.
Barack Obama says that he wants to "heal America and repair the world." One wonders what he will do for an encore and whether he will rest on the seventh day.
That we have so many people who are ready to be swept along by such rhetoric is a huge danger, for it means that the fate of this great nation is at risk from any skilled demagogue who comes along.
Barack Obama says that he wants to "heal" the country while at the same time promoting the idea that all sorts of people are victims for whom he will fight.
Being divisive while proclaiming unity is something you can do only in the world of rhetoric.
Senator Obama has no monopoly on demagoguery, however. Former Senator John Edwards has been playing this game longer, even if not as effectively in the political arena.
John Edwards built his own fortune in the courtroom, depicting babies with birth defects as victims of the doctors who delivered them. The cost of such demagoguery has gone far beyond the tens of millions of dollars that Edwards pocketed for himself from gullible juries.
Such lawsuits based on junk science have driven up the cost of medical care, not only directly but even more so indirectly, by leading to an increase in Caesarean births and other costly "defensive medicine" to protect doctors rather than patients.
The world of John Edwards, like the world of Barack Obama, is a world of victims, whose savior he claims to be.
What is scary is how little interest the public and the media have in the actual track record of political saviors and the cry of generic "change."
America is not czarist Russia or Iran under the shah, so that people might think that any change was bound to be for the better. Yet even in those despotic countries the changes — to communism and to the ayatollahs — made them far worse.
The time is long overdue for voters to demand specifics instead of rhetoric that turns their emotions on and their minds off.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy.
Give the liberals time....
I didn’t agree with him the other day, so I’m glad I can here.
I sure hope he doesn’t hold his breath though.
To be honest, I think he gave our side a free pass here. We could use a little more thinking as well IMO.
Sowell ping!
Agreed...I believe he singled out Obama and Edwards because the demagoguery they’ve both been guilty of is so blatant and anyone with half a brain should see through it, of course there are millions without half a brain.
Demagogue’s, socialists, progressives.........fascists all words that explain what Obama, Edwards, and Hillary really are.
The media love it, college kids and professors eat it up, Hollywood pedals it, and the ignorant swallow it whole.
Its a surprising to me that conservatives have held up this long.
But Sowell is right, we are on a dangerous path.
Turns out to be FDR, and not too far from Hitler and Mussolini - all good orators and demagogues.
I agree with your thoughts, but I’m going to have to include the cunning Mrs. in there too. It’s tough to consider what our founding fathers would think of the democrat party today that wouldn’t include some long walks and a short poop deck.
In US we know it better as "triangulation", as practiced by Clintons - that's why, IMHO, Hillary Clinton is more dangerous as a candidate than "pure" populist demagogues like Obama and Edwards (either of whom also don't stand a chance due to profound lack of Commander in Chief credentials in time of war, which didn't hamper Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 because of fall of Soviet Union and "peace dividend", among many other things).
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” - H. L. Mencken
BTTT.
Of course we’re not Russia or Germany. I don’t expect mass arrests or killing on a mass scale.
What I expect is the loss of careers in academia, media, and government by those who don’t believe the prevailing ideology; harassment through regulation against groups and individuals who don’t try to get along; intimidation and threats, usually spoken in soft, kindly voices, with a smiling police official or a government agent standing silently in the background; silencing voices using laws against “hate speech” and “sexual harassment”; and, occasionally, a show trial for those few who are prominent enough or sufficiently vocal to upset the apple cart. I can see the apologetics even now: “He just lost his job, can’t he move on?” or “No one has the right to say things which can be interpreted as hate.”
The end result will probably be something on the order of the Glorious Revolution of the 1660s in England, with elites battling elites, institutions battling institutions, and a few prominent heads rollings, perhaps literally among the fanatics in leftist communities.
At the end, hopefully, we will regain our sense of freedom and individualism, in the same way that the English dealt with their issues of royalty, church, and rule of law. I have faith in the United States, and I really don’t see us at the end of our time in this world. On the other hand, for the next several years, it might seem that way.
I believe there’s truth in what you say and also that this will get worse before it gets better but I do believe we’ll overcome.
Because socialism/populism leads to real problems, financial, political as well ad of plain survivorship and then people that can still choose - in a democracy - start thinking instead of feeling and choose real leaders, not demagogues, to get them the "out" of troubles.
After "malaise" of Carter (really of 1970s) they chose Reagan. In states, in NY after Dinkins they chose Pataki, in MA they chose several Republicans for Governorship in a row to keep Legislature in some sort of check and semblance of fiscal discipline and avoid otherwise inevitable bankruptcy, in CA they threw out Gray Davis after things became undeniably bad, in LA they just did the same (though make up of electorate changed somewhat), HI elected Republican after spending the "prosperous" 90s in recession, etc. etc. etc.
However, when things get "fixed" the same populus turns on a dime to vote for "bread and entertainment" and whoever will promise them more of "free" government goodies, wins. Brits kicked out Winston Churchill few months after he was instrumental in defeating the Nazis and winning WW2. Same story in the states. MA is now governed by Patrick Deval, NY by the sleaze Eliot Spitzer etc. etc. etc.
I could title this, “Why I don’t listen to anything politicians say and look only at their records.”
BTTT
Would probably make an effective TV ad. One side shows the pol mouthing on and the other side scrolls thru their real record.
It says something that Hillary is arguably—and by a very small margin—perhaps, the least scary Democrat out there!
Their call is for UTOPIA but in reality they want ME_TOP_A_U.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.