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Finally, after eight years in this forum, someone has inadvertently offered me the excuse to post a picture of Giada. |
Posted on 05/05/2006 5:59:43 AM PDT by RKV
I think the brand of rabid, virulent marxism sweeping latin and south america are possibly the biggest challenge we face. They may very well eclipse the radical islamists. And I think China is behind it.
Because an idiot is born every minute
I think the author of this piece is correct. The thing that drives socialism and makes it impossible to kill is that people are unwilling to believe that life and humans not perfectable, that life has winners and losers, and that actual physical equality is impossible to enforce.
Socialism will never die because there is an endless supply of greedy, would-be dictators that would promise the ignorant, envious masses a heaven on earth, "something for nothing".
Because they haven't plundered every individual that has achieved
anything above mediocrity to within a hair's breath of his life yet.
Socialism thrives on envy. Envy is one of the strongest motivators of human behavior.
I have always found it interesting that the Decalogue has four commandments that govern the relationship between God and man, five commandments that forbid certain behaviors, and a final commandment that forbids envy ("thou shalt not covet"), which is a habit of thought rather than an action.
Envy is the organizing principle of socialism and of most political parties. Envy, I think, is a far more potent force in democratic politics than rational thought. For one thing, it takes effort to exercise rational thought, and it takes effort to suppress the natural impulse of envy. Conversely, it takes no effort to indulge one's natural inclination to envy and rationalize it as an altruistic concern for the welfare of others.
Tagline material, thanks.
Well put. I strongly agree.
Very good article. Reading through people's posts, I see that the majority of them agree: socialism survives precisely because it IS a religion, and that in fact was how it was presented.
As for capitalism, it is not the product of any one person (there's no cult-figure, such as Marx, Lenin or Che Guevara) and is not, in a sense, something that was planned but is more or less the natural order of humanity, based on the right of human beings to own property individually and dispose of it as they wish. Hence it's not dramatic enough and it's a little bit hard to dress it up. No "Capitalist Day" parades, for example! Most of all, it's not a religion, in any way, shape or form, whereas Socialism is.
But a lot of people with inherited wealth, especially, don't know that. You and I do, but Kennedys and Rockefellers seem not to understand it. That's because they have never ahd to earn anything.
That is why we have an income tax, not a wealth tax. (Not that I'm advocating a wealth tax.)
"Men need myths -- and until capitalism can come up with a transformative myth of its own, it may well be that many men will prefer to find their myths in the same place they found them in the first part of the twentieth century -- the myth of revolutionary socialism."
Capitalism HAS a narrative of its own, which is a major reason socialism has been discredited. And that's the narrative of rising standards of living based on a competitive marketplace. Not too complicated.
Why isn't socialism dead? Because there will always be people who will try to leech off the production of others without compensation.
As long as one person has one dollar more than some other people, we'll have socialism. My own belief is that much of socialism is based on nothing more than envy. That is behind much of the shrill denunciations of ceos who haul down hugh settlement bonuses. Even though many of the people denouncing the ceos are doing very well themselves. Socialism is the economic system of losers. Socialists are people who have failed and want others to fail as bad as they have.
And I think China is behind it.
^^^^
That is my first thought as well. We are witnessing a race to see if Freedom or Chinese communist control spreads faster in the next ten years. The confounding factor is that individual Chinese are joining the middle class at a great rate, which never really happened behind the Iron Curtain, and they may not want to look on the US as a Great Satan.
IOW, capitalism is social in nature - unlike "social"ism, which is a deceptively coined word. All leftists reflexively distort the term, "social;" leftists say "society should" when they mean nothing other than that government "should" do (whatever). IOW, leftists posture as standing for "society" when what they actually advocate is not social-ism but government-ism - tyranny.Socialism stands for government ownership of the means of production, which means that socialism takes not only the means of production but the particular goods to be produced as a given (After all, different goods require different means of production). If the goods to be produced are taken as a given, the idea of physical progress has been rejected. So much for the leftist's claim to the mantle of "progressive" - leftists are profoundly reactionary.
With capitalism, "the poor" in America have reached the standard of living enjoyed by the middle class only 50 years ago. And considering the advantages in travel, in convenience, and in medical care for self and family, an American secretary today would not care to live in the circumstances of Queen Victoria (1819-1901). Socialism would have prevented all, or nearly all, of that progress. Over any appreciable period of time, socialism shares not wealth, but poverty.
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Finally, after eight years in this forum, someone has inadvertently offered me the excuse to post a picture of Giada. |
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