Posted on 01/08/2014 2:43:48 AM PST by markomalley
It took capitalism half a century to come back from the Great Depression. It’s taken socialism half that time to come back from the collapse of the Soviet Union. In New York City, avowed socialist Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared that his goal is to take “dead aim at the Tale of Two Cities” — the gap between rich and poor. In Seattle, newly elected socialist city Councilmember Kshama Sawant addressed supporters, explaining, “I wear the badge of socialist with honor.” To great acclaim from the left, columnist Jesse Myerson of Rolling Stone put out a column telling millennials that they ought to fight for government-guaranteed employment, a universal basic income, collectivization of private property, nationalization of private assets and public banks.
The newly flowering buds of Marxism no longer reside on the fringes. Not when the president of the United States has declared fighting income inequality his chief task as commander in chief. Not when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said that America faces “no greater challenge” than income disparity. Not when MSNBC, The New York Times and the amalgamated pro-Obama media outlets have all declared their mission for 2014 a campaign against rich people.
Less than 20 years ago, former President Bill Clinton, facing reelection, declared “the era of big government” over. By 2011, Clinton reversed himself, declaring that it was government’s role to “give people the tools and create the conditions to make the most of our lives.”
So what happened?
Capitalism failed to make a case for itself. Back in 1998, shortly after the world seemed to reach a consensus on the ineffectiveness of socialist schemes, economists Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw wrote that the free market required something beyond mere success: It required “legitimacy.” But, said Yergin and Stanislaw, “a system that takes the pursuit of self-interest and profit as its guiding light does not necessarily satisfy the yearning in the human soul for belief and some higher meaning beyond materialism.” In other words, they wrote, while Spanish communists would die with the word “Stalin” on their lips, “few people would die with the words ‘free markets’ on their lips.”
The failure to make a moral case for capitalism has doomed capitalism to the status of a perennial backup plan. When people are desperate or wealthy, they turn to socialism; only when they have no other alternative do they embrace the free market. After all, lies about guaranteed security are far more seductive than lectures about personal responsibility.
So what is the moral case for capitalism? It lies in recognition that socialism isn’t a great idea gone wrong — it’s an evil philosophy in action. It isn’t driven by altruism; it’s driven by greed and jealousy. Socialism states that you owe me something simply because I exist. Capitalism, by contrast, results in a sort of reality-forced altruism: I may not want to help you, I may dislike you, but if I don’t give you a product or service you want, I will starve. Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution. Socialism violates at least three of the Ten Commandments: It turns government into God, it legalizes thievery and it elevates covetousness. Discussions of income inequality, after all, aren’t about prosperity but about petty spite. Why should you care how much money I make, so long as you are happy?
Conservatives talk results when discussing the shortcomings of socialism. They’re right: Socialism is ineffective, destructive and stunting to the human spirit. But they’re wrong to abandon the field of morality when discussing the contrast between freedom and control. And it’s this abandonment — this perverse laziness — that has led to socialism’s comeback, even though within living memory, we have seen continental economies collapse and millions slaughtered in the name of this false god.
To the defeatists and the let it crash folks your missing one important point about the 50% getting freebees. They are LAZY! Yes every election a percent will go out and vote especially the government class that depends on getting their cut of redistribution. If they weren’t lazy the Democrats wouldn’t have to encourage them to vote, sometimes even bussing them. The Democrats wouldn’t be looking for new voters via “immigration reform”. Look at the numbers from Obama’s reelection, less than the first. Had Republicans gotten out the vote Romney would be president. ( I not saying that’s great just better than Obama). As every election draws near Democrats have a name for it GOTV. Get out the vote. They hound voters till they vote. The gimmie class and their masters can be defeated it just takes work. Every Freeper and conservative should be working towards the goal of getting everyone you know out to vote.
That’s the underlying assumption behind “the living wage” as well.
People who support it need that pushed back in their faces - are people owed something because they exist? And at whose expense?
Socialism is on the march in Western Europe and the United States not the former Soviet Union, and it is the rise of the central banks, the creation of the Euro and EU expansion that spurs it on.
“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Margaret Thatcher
When there’s no incentive to work, people won’t work, and the system collapses. We see a microcosm of it in the Obamacare exchanges. Young people are looking out for #1 and have little interest in subsidizing health insurance for older ones.
“Atlas Shrugged” relates the cycle.
Good call, seeing as bankers funded Marx to write the Manifesto. The biggest pushers here in the US were the Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations. That story was captured in Rene Wormser's book, Foundations: Their Power and Influence. It was Rockefeller who funded and managed the sexual revolution for example, producing the dysfunctional children who have been the foot-soldiers of socialism. Between the income tax and public education, the extremely wealthy found a way to shackle their competition by owning or controlling every medium of public education while avoiding paying for it themselves as they had also bought corporate media.
I have no problem with someone becoming fabulously rich, but I do have a problem with gaming the system to do it. That is theft.
“It is hard to make a case for it when you have a number approaching 1/3 of this country’s population NOT working and on some sort of government entitlement or other.”.
And to make matters worse, the gubmint now wants to make more “takers” via amnesty. Stupid bastards, all of them.
It is effective to look at socialism for what it is, a pseudo-religion, weirdly enough, based on Christianity.
That is, if you take The Bible, remove God, and substitute man in His place as the creator and ruler of all things, the end result is socialism. The parallels with the Book of Genesis to the major doctrines of socialism are striking.
For example, the environmentalist movement has as its impulse returning to the state of nature found in the Garden of Eden. That is, to foreswear civilization and return to living in small, disconnected communal villages bereft of anything modern.
That 90% or more of mankind would have to die for this accomplishment is unimportant to them.
They also believe that the cause of the expulsion of mankind from the Garden of Eden, eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, must be reversed. And the way to achieve this is through moral relativity, to destroy the idea that good and evil exist.
These ideas crop up again and again in socialist, and even pre-socialist writings, not through any direct connection other than the King James Version Bible.
At the same time, you see other elements of socialism in their feudal state of mind. They embrace the idea of an elite which rules over everyone else, the peasantry. Combined, the two represent God to them.
For this reason, it is easy for them to imagine that mankind can use a tiny fraction of a trace gas to manipulate the immense atmosphere of Earth. People can do this, because, well, they are God. It’s magic.
It gets downright perverse at times, because socialists can really imagine themselves as being faithful to their Judeo-Christian traditions. Nancy Pelosi truly imagines herself as a “good Catholic socialist”, but is utterly disconnected from a belief in God, muddling the two together terribly.
With a straight face, she insists that ‘God’ would approve of abortion, homosexual marriage, euthanasia, you name it, because she imagines herself as a vital part of the leadership, the brain, of mankind as God.
The deeper you delve into this idea, the more filth and cobwebs you will find. No serious person of faith should have anything to do with socialists or socialism.
“communists would die with the word “Stalin” on their lips”
There’s the problem - not enough communists died. Like it or not, we need to set up a 2nd Nuremberg tribunal that judges and punishes communists. The 1st Nuremberg tribunal established a loathing toward Nazism. The 2nd tribunal can accomplish a hatred toward communism.
Excellent observation. When I first read it, I was reminded of how Adolf Hitler rose to power by promising the German people how his Socialist form of Government would bring prosperity and equality to all. For obvious reasons, things did not go according to plan.
Why you axin me? I jus want mah free stuff.
“It took capitalism half a century to come back from the Great Depression. “
Go no further. FDR was no capitalist, his policies were not capitalist; they were overwhelmingly Socialist, and directly responsible for the protraction of the worst, deepest, and longest depression in American history. The rest of the article is built on a foundation of sand.
2 things. Communists in America, specifically. And. I don’t know that they needed to die (that’s their schtick, not so much, ours)- but they did need to be exiled & never allowed to return under any circumstances. If they had family that remained here & they maintained contact, those who remained needed to be removed, too. Imprisoning them would have been like putting a bandaid on cancer.
Free speech is fine & noble, but when you *know* that a group is engineering an overthrow of our government, it is is suicidal to allow them to stay here. It is not as if they had no place else to go (USSR, China).
NEVER believe that a loathing against national socialism has been established. It is re-surging. (Not the same as nationalism, btw) The only difference between socialists, communists, & “national socialists” is nuance; minor details. Left is left. All are deadly & totalitarian. The worse things get, the more vulnerable naive, ignorant, or desperate people become..
My humble opinion is that the resurgence of socialism is the result of the indoctrination that has replaced education. How many generations have absolutely no inkling about what society was like 40, 45 years ago? Our very history- facts, are being scrubbed before our eyes. Reality concerning that time doesn’t even exist for someone born in the 70s & beyond. (One good example is the homosexual narrative.)
Our problem is social engineering. Whether or not it is too late to counter that, I don’t know. But we should certainly be telling the truth at every opportunity- especially to young people. Before we die off & there’s no one left to tell it.
IMHO Ben Shapiro missed the primary reason why socialism made such a rapid come back - it was still be taught in the colleges nation wide as the “correct” political system.
Like it or not, as long as the sons and daughters of the 1960’s student radicals infect our colleges socialism will always be held up as the most perfect form of political activity. I use the word “infect” to reflect the professors’ habits of removing all dissent in the classroom.
Isn’t it interesting that the followers and their sons and daughters who preached dissent, up through and including the use of violence, can not tolerate any dissent to their world views.
which is the ultimate irony since the system that "dare not speak its name" is the only one capable of saving this sinking ship.
Didn't he institute a 100% income tax (all income over 25K)?
His conclusion is spot on our battle is for liberty and freedom.
belief in socialism is like belief in magic.
actually it’s worse than that...it’s belief in magic but to satisfy greed/sloth. makes it almost irresistible.
It is hard to make a case for it when you have a number approaching 1/3 of this country's population NOT working and on some sort of government entitlement or other.
It's also hard to make a case for anything hated by 90% of the media, whose mediots are actually trained forensic werewolves and apparatchiks of an underground Party whose goal is the destruction of Norman Rockwell's America -- the fairest, most open, most generous, most successful and successfully sharing society in the history of the human race.
We're talking about the Cain and Abel story on a civilizational level.
Correctamundo-bump. Obama and his closeted Politburo are the "B Team" of Communism. The Soviets failed -- call in Obama, Comrade Jarrett, Comrades Axelrod and Van Jones, and reload the Main Enemy.
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