Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Victor Davis Hanson: The Left Knows Leftism Doesn’t Work
American Greatness ^ | 10 Jun, 2024 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 06/10/2024 4:41:22 AM PDT by MtnClimber

If Biden and his handlers have taught us anything, human nature cannot be fooled, and the current four-year experiment will have to end before it ends us—and soon.

Do not expect the radical left to survey the wreckage of socialism and communism in history and accept that statism impoverishes people and erodes their freedoms. There will never be admissions by our elite that progressivism exists mainly for the acquisition of power by the utopian and virtue-signaling few, who ensure that they are never subject to the baleful implementation of their ideological agendas on the rest of us.

Still, leftists look around at what they have done to America in the last four years and implicitly know that the plan did not work, the people detested it, or both.

How do we know this? By a variety of barometers.

None of the major Biden “achievements”—10 million illegal aliens across a nonexistent border, key components of the cost of living 25-30 percent higher than in 2020, wars and chaos abroad, DEI racial and tribal obsessions, wars on fossil fuels—poll at even 40-45 percent. Biden’s own approval ratings, as the nominal architect of the most left-wing agenda since the Roosevelt administration, hover between 36 and 34 percent.

But most importantly, the left is not running on its record of the last three-and-a-half years but instead studiously ignoring it, at least temporarily through November. Suddenly, we aren’t hearing so much about cancelling pipelines and freezing federal oil leases, or so much demonization of the “greedy” oil companies. Instead, Biden is further draining the strategic petroleum reserve and begging OPEC in general and the no-longer-demonized Saudi Arabia in particular to pump oil as fast as possible.

We were lied to for nearly four years that the border was “secure,” as 10 million foreign nationals flooded...

(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: biden; demonicrats; left; leftism; vdh; victordavishanson
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-38 next last

1 posted on 06/10/2024 4:41:22 AM PDT by MtnClimber
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

The left is driven by jealousy, greed and anger. You should never expect their plans to be good for you. Expect intentional harm.


2 posted on 06/10/2024 4:41:49 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

When evil individuals have no consequences for their actions, they will continue to do evil.


3 posted on 06/10/2024 4:44:49 AM PDT by PGalt (Past Peak Civilization?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: texas booster

VDH ping


4 posted on 06/10/2024 4:45:09 AM PDT by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page. More photos added.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

The average lefty may be driven by rage, jealousy, and every other human non-virtue.

Those leading the left use leftism to increase ownership of the world. By driving the world to war, they crash market values and can buy up the market at bargain prices. Given enough time, they own the world in a literal sense.


5 posted on 06/10/2024 4:46:09 AM PDT by Jonty30 (He hunted a mammoth for me, just because I said I was hungry. He is such a good friend. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber
"Do not expect the radical left to survey the wreckage of socialism and communism in history and accept that statism impoverishes people and erodes their freedoms."

For all of VDH's intellectual heft, he fails to realize that in the view of communist true believers, what he deems a failure is their very definition of success.

If your goal and objective is a population controlled by dependence on government for their mere subsistence, then communism is an optimum avenue for success.

6 posted on 06/10/2024 4:54:20 AM PDT by Joe 6-pack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

Linen said, “We must grind the people between the millstones of inflation and taxation.” There was not a kind, helping bone in his body. The Left is about destruction for the sake of destruction. It seems illogical and irrational, but the Left isn’t about helping the people, it’s about breaking them down so they will accept control. Control is their goal.


7 posted on 06/10/2024 4:59:30 AM PDT by Gen.Blather (Wait! I said that out loud? )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber
"In short, the policies that the left has given us over the last years—hyperinflation, spiking staple and gas prices, racial and tribal chauvinism, dangerous streets, an emasculated and politicized military, and wars abroad—did not work, and are now being masked to retain power, put on hold, or even reversed."

I think VDH is trying to be charitable. But he gives it away with the bolded line. Its all temporary until the Left can fool enough people or cheat enough to retain power. Even as they feign the basic appearance of a return to sanity, they're still rounding up people (J6, pro lifers, media that doesn't toe the 'narrative') and throwing them in prison or effectively debanking them.

8 posted on 06/10/2024 5:00:26 AM PDT by Tench_Coxe (The woke were surprised by the reaction to the Bud Light fiasco. May there be many more surprises)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

The left is convinced of Karl Marx’s term, ‘scientific socialism’. That basically means keep making adjustments until you get your ideal society.


9 posted on 06/10/2024 5:03:16 AM PDT by Jonty30 (He hunted a mammoth for me, just because I said I was hungry. He is such a good friend. )
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

The Left’s idea of “working” is not the same idea of working that Victor—or a majority of American voters—has.


10 posted on 06/10/2024 5:06:11 AM PDT by 9YearLurker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber
Everyone knows leftism doesn’t work, except for:

The criminals pushing/running it

The leeches benefitting from it

The stupid rich white liberals who support it for emotional reasons (and because they’re stupid)

11 posted on 06/10/2024 5:19:46 AM PDT by Sicon ("All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - G. Orwell>)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Tench_Coxe
I think that's exactly right.

There are plenty of low-level brainwashed people who think they are saving the world. But the people at the top are building a world where they have total control. They want the power and they want a system that works for them. They don't care about people or humanity.

It's a new feudalism.

12 posted on 06/10/2024 5:20:25 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (It's not "Quiet Quitting" -- it's "Going Galt".)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: ClearCase_guy

Yup

Somewhat related
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/06/civil_war_if_trump_goes_to_prison.html


13 posted on 06/10/2024 5:22:48 AM PDT by combat_boots
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

Yes, and they do not care if it works or doesn’t work.

P O W E R > That is the objective. Nothing more.................


14 posted on 06/10/2024 5:27:38 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

ping


15 posted on 06/10/2024 5:29:56 AM PDT by Recovering Ex-hippie (The 2020 election Trump victory determines the fate f America and Freedom.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
― George Orwell, 1984


16 posted on 06/10/2024 5:32:25 AM PDT by Red Badger (Homeless veterans camp in the streets while illegals are put up in 5 Star hotels....................)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: texas booster

Good article by VDH, that can be summarized as the left not being able to ask the classic question: “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?” They’re trying to distance themselves from the chaos they caused.


17 posted on 06/10/2024 5:51:16 AM PDT by Tell It Right (Galatians 6:14 -- May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ...)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber
Corporations like Disney, Target, and Anheuser-Busch have all begun backtracking on their money-losing, market-share-eroding woke/DEI agendas.

Didn't Disney just release a new woke turd called "Star Wars: The Acolyte" (a.k.a. the "gayest Star Wars" ever)? They're not backtracking.

18 posted on 06/10/2024 5:52:19 AM PDT by Sicon ("All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - G. Orwell>)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: MtnClimber

It doesn’t work as advertised to to public. It DOES work for the unmentioned goal of gaining tyrannical power over a society.

NEVER look at what the Left says, look instead at what they do.


19 posted on 06/10/2024 6:40:54 AM PDT by Ancesthntr (“The right to buy weapons is the right to be free.” ― A.E. Van Vogt, The Weapons Shops of Isher)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Ancesthntr
NEVER look at what the Left says, look instead at what they do.

Or what they accuse their opponents of nefariously doing, typically it is exactly what they are doing.

20 posted on 06/10/2024 6:42:45 AM PDT by 1Old Pro
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 19 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-38 next last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson