[Oratam]

We see the Law of Unintened Consequences in action today. The Luxemburgers opening the Christmas Market by sheer overwhelming the Vax Nazis is not what the Central Planners were expecting. I hope we see more and more of this everywhere.

I find it curious how we fought Nazi Germany last century to dismantle fascism and free Europe from German occupation only to have an EU dominated by Germany impose fascism on Europe.

I also find it curious that Britain fought tooth and nail to defend its island against Nazi (national socialism) Germany only to impose its own national socialism (a nationalized economy) the moment victory was declared.

What was it all for?

Using the Hegelian dialectic, the free market system of the United States serving as Thesis and the Communist system of the Soviet Union serving as Antithesis, a Synthesis emerged that was clearly not the intended one—National Socialism a la fascist Italy and Germany—so, it had to be crushed. Another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

World War Two resulted in the destruction of a continent’s industrial base AND conditioned citizen’s to having war time “command economies.” Following the war, the victorious allies were able to impose “kinder, gentler” socialism on their citizens. This was the “build back better” of the mid-20th Century.

(The U.S. had it in the form of New Deal era programs from the 1930s but unlike Europe, our economy wasn’t in a shambles following the war. It wouldn’t be until the 1960s that the U.S. expanded the federal government’s role in the economy with LBJ, Nixon and Carter all sharing blame. Reagan rolled some of it back but I believe his chief success was in articulating the concept of freedom to several generations who either forgot what it was or never knew it.)

Slide over

[grey_whiskers]

Go read the book The Servile State by Hilaire Belloc. It was written in 1913 (before the Commie revolution in Russia) and it predicted that the clash of free-market systems with Communism, would result in a "servile state": a state in which most people would be compelled to work at low pay for the benefit of others.

[little jeremiah]

In the early 1900s, even before the Bolshevik revolution, there were many communists in Europe and the US larded among the intelligentsia, music, the arts, the literati, academia and so on.

They gradually infiltrated instutitions, the government, foundations and so on.

The rest is history.

They almost succeeded. But not quite.

[Bigg Red]

That was great commentary and not a slide, FRen.