Posted on 05/25/2006 4:44:58 PM PDT by wagglebee
Sigmund Freud was the fellow who had the copyright on the ego, the id and the superego. He was also the guy who managed to turn the couch, formerly just another piece of over-stuffed Viennese furniture, into a legitimate business expense. But even he acknowledged that he was unable to decipher what it was that women wanted.
Strangely enough, that happens to be one question to which I actually know the answer. Women want men to be manly chaps, strong and virile, while at the same time they want us to be completely open and in touch with our emotions. Furthermore, they want us to be more interested in what they think, say and feel than we are in cars, sports and beer. In short, they want the impossible. The more reasonable amongst them will settle for our picking up after ourselves.
The thing that has me stumped is trying to figure out what leftists want. For example, when left-wing judges take it upon themselves to legislate from the bench, liberals are quick to say that the Constitution is a living document and that it has to evolve to accommodate a changing world. However, whenever a conservative suggests that the 14th amendment, which grants automatic citizenship on any person born in America, ought to be changed to deny that gift to those born to illegal aliens, those same people carry on as if the Constitution, like the 10 Commandments, was carved in stone.
But, really, we have no reason to believe that the Founding Fathers, who fought a war to gain sovereignty for this nation, wouldn't have entertained second thoughts if they'd ever envisioned a foreign invasion numbering in the millions. I mean, it's a basic tenet of the law that nobody is entitled to profit from a crime. To suggest that the child, the beneficiary of his parents' illegal act, doesn't profit is patently absurd. To argue that he shouldn't be deprived of the advantage because he didn't break the law, is ridiculous. You might as well suggest that if a bank robber gives his ill-gotten gains to his wife and kids, the family should get to keep the loot because, after all, they weren't the ones who drove the getaway car.
Another thing about liberals I can't begin to figure out is their abiding devotion to failed economic theories. The fact that communism hasn't worked anywhere in the world doesn't cool their ardor in the slightest. The fact that Marx's brainstorm invariably metastasizes into a despotic tyranny – be it in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Cambodia or Venezuela – doesn't make the slightest impression on them. Neither does the fact that socialism has brought much of Europe to the brink of moral and financial bankruptcy faze them in the least.
In our own country, the most obvious failure of socialism is Social Security, the single largest pyramid scheme ever conceived by the mind of man. When Ponzi did it, he went to jail for fraud; when Roosevelt pulled it off, he was hailed as a savior. As someone or other once observed, if you're going to steal, steal big.
So why is it that leftists continue to promote these half-cocked alternatives to capitalism, the only economic program that's ever motivated people to aspire, to compete, to achieve and to innovate?
Well, I hate to be impolite, but when people keep doing the same thing in spite of getting the same rotten results, we have been told by experts in the field that it's a pretty sure sign of insanity.
And just in case any doubt remains, you merely have to look to those who speak on their behalf. Assuming you're not a cuckoo yourself, can you possibly imagine rallying around the unappetizing likes of Gore and Kerry, Schumer and Durbin, Kennedy and Rangel, Leahy and Biden, Byrd and Boxer, Sharpton and Jackson, McKinney and Waters, Al Franken and Michael Moore, George Soros and Norman Lear, Hillary and Bill, and Jimmy Carter?
Or merely consider the man the liberals selected to be their party's leader, the man they chose to carry their banner into battle. While most people will always associate Howard Dean with his primary election meltdown, I chose to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, in the heat of a presidential campaign – especially a campaign in which he had somehow managed to snatch defeat from the very jaws of victory – people are given to saying, or, in Dean's case, shrieking, some very odd things.
Instead, my clearest, most lasting memory of the party boss will forever be his calm and collected response to someone's asking what the Democratic candidates should be saying in the upcoming elections. Replied Mr. Dean: "My three-word message is, we can do better."
Absolutely perfect!
That's because they don't care whether economic theories work - they're cool with despotic tyranny. They always figure they'll be on the side of the tyrants, rather than the side of the tyrannized.
Some people just like to tell other people how to live their lives.
As Paul Begala said on watching King William I sign another Executive Order - "Stroke of the pen, law of the land. Kinda cool".
you can take "economic theories" out of that statement and put in an array of other topic yet still be right on the money...
Ping. :-)
I assumed he meant that he planned on screeching more.
Three words: Antisocial Personality Disorder.
leftists continue to promote these half-cocked alternatives to capitalism, the only economic program that's ever motivated people to aspire, to compete, to achieve and to innovate
Herein lies the answer to the author's question: NONE of the leftists named have worked in 'capitalism' to earn a living. ALL of them have ONLY fed from the public trough. Oh, for the opportunity to vote for someone who has actually had to meet a payroll!
Even Dean wouldn't think that that would be 'better'.
Right? right?
;-)
Dean is such a nutjob, I really don't even want to dwell on his definition of "better."
The problem is that between dream and reality are often very good reasons why not. For example, what stands between an imaginary economy in which everyone happily shares and no one has more than anyone else, and the world as it really is, is human nature. The socialist addresses this by simply changing human nature. Best of luck with that.
Bump!
Good post.
“So long as effective freedom of exchange is maintained, the central feature of the market organization of economic activity is that it prevents one person from interfering with another in respect of most of his activities. The consumer is protected from coercion by the seller because of the presence of other sellers with whom he can deal. The seller is protected from coercion by the consumer because of other consumers to whom he can sell. The employee is protected from coercion by the employer because of other employers for whom he can work, and so on. And the market does this impersonally and without centralized authority.”
“Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it does this task so well. It gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."
-Milton Friedman 1962
Bump....
An excellent post. The Left's naive utopianism causes them to reject the good results of capitalism for the unreachable dreams of Marxism. They try to change man's nature and create "a new man." That is the driving force behind their many "re-education" camps. They think that they know better than everybody else, so they want to be the elites ("little gods") in a top-down society. Their arrogance and egotism knows few limits.
Because to the financially dominant, paying politicians to control other people's assets is cheaper than it is to buy the assets.
That's why Jihadism doesn't bug them particularly. They, especialluy the academics, believe the arabs are too dumb to run a technological country but will recognize that fact when they overrun America or receive it as a gift and will appoint the professors at Harvard and their minions to be viziers and actually keep the system working.
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