Posted on 03/23/2006 4:43:31 AM PST by Tolik
...But my children, the sixth-generation inheritors of the house, are facing a surreal world. The new leaders of the left, not much different in their lifestyles from those on the elite right, are now almost all multimillionaires. Their populism focuses on everything from gay marriage and unrestricted abortion to stopping Arctic oil exploration.
Jihadists don't wear uniforms. Even hostile countries that subsidize such terrorists deny doing so. Nazis and Stalinists never toppled an American office building; Islamists with far fewer resources have. And in a world of miniaturized weapons and easy global travel, they have a better chance of repeating their carnage than any of our earlier, more recognizable enemies.
...But the greatest difference is that those first four generations who lived and died in this house shared a certain tragic vision of man's limitations. Perhaps they lost too many crops before harvest. Or they grew to assume that optimistic weather reports and upbeat cooperative newsletters were hardly to be trusted as "intelligence." They considered the choices in their many wars only between bad or worse, and that the Americans who fought them did not have to be perfect to still be good.
Now this relic of a house has a TV dish on the roof and automatic garage doors. Yet otherwise it must look about the same as when someone, whom I seem to know but never saw, built it right after the Civil War. But while we can still recognize it as the familiar solid house of old, I wonder whether it would say the same of us now inside.
<...snap...>
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Let me know if you want in or out.
Links: FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
His website: http://victorhanson.com/ NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
Even Noam Chomsky has said, "The Republicans are the party of the rich, but the Democrats are the party of the really rich."
But the greatest difference is that those first four generations who lived and died in this house shared a certain tragic vision of man's limitations. Perhaps they lost too many crops before harvest. Or they grew to assume that optimistic weather reports and upbeat cooperative newsletters were hardly to be trusted as "intelligence." They considered the choices in their many wars only between bad or worse, and that the Americans who fought them did not have to be perfect to still be good.
Somewhere along the line way to many people have come to the conclusion that...
1 Nothing bad should ever happen to them. (No matter what they do).
2 IF something bad does happen it's not they're fault. It's someone elses fault and they must be made to pay.
Noam Chomsky, greedy capitalist
http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=4699
And a hypocrite, too. Peter Sweitzer of Canadas National Post points to Chomskys use of tax-avoiding trsusts, investments, and money-making schemes:
The iconic MIT linguist and left-wing activist frequently has lashed out against the massive use of tax havens to shift the burden to the general population and away from the rich, and criticized the concentration of wealth in trusts by the wealthiest 1%. He says the U.S. tax code is rigged with complicated devices for ensuring that the poorlike 80% of the populationpay off the rich.
But trusts cant be all bad. After all, Chomsky, with a net worth north of US$2-million, decided to create one for himself. A few years back he went to Bostons venerable white-shoe law firm, Palmer and Dodge, and, with the help of a tax attorney specializing in income-tax planning, set up an irrevocable trust to protect his assets from Uncle Sam. [....]
Chomsky did say that his tax shelter is OK because he and his family are trying to help suffering people.
In my experience, liberals are often greedy and immoral in exactly the terms they denounce capitalism. It seems to me they project their own faults onto the system and then salve their consciences by adopting political positions to in theory compensate for their own faults.
I have nothing against capitalism, getting rich, or minimizing taxes. But I cant stand people who criticize others for their own faults.
Now this relic of a house has a TV dish on the roof and automatic garage doors. Yet otherwise it must look about the same as when someone, whom I seem to know but never saw, built it right after the Civil War. But while we can still recognize it as the familiar solid house of old, I wonder whether it would say the same of us now inside.
This is why we need to keep alive such places as Free Republic and continue to fight against the left.
Your #4 is right on too.
Remember that when Chomsky criticizes Democrats, he's doing it as someone who sees himself as even farther to the Left, criticizing people who aren't sufficiently Left enough. That's the whole radical position - "there's no difference between Republicans and Democrats so you have to be truely radical like me."
Two key differences between the generations that Hanson chronicles are increasing urbanization and increasing dependence on government redistribution of income to provide a buffer against the sort of vicissitudes that made country people wonder if they would eat. That latter was the upshot of the Great Depression, rather like treating a toothache with heroin. It's effective enough but when the toothache goes away the heroin habit remains, and so has the dependence on redistribution of income. The difficulty is that it really does provide such a buffer and that we have become so accustomed to it being there that absence is regarded as intolerable hardship. This is certainly true under the social democracies in France and Germany - the evidence is now undeniable - and the comfort level that resulted appears as addictive as a heroin habit and just as impossible to maintain.
I do not think a return to the days of uncertainty and widespread famine is necessarily either the answer or the picture of a better world, but inasmuch as the present nanny state appears to be unsustainable there is certainly room for a few better ideas. Unfortunately the Democrats appear only to offer more of the same. Socialism didn't work so let's try more, central planning didn't work so let's try more, regulation didn't work so let's try still more - at some point you can beat a dead horse into moving but it doesn't mean he's going anywhere.
Although there doesn't appear to me to be any particular theoretical justication for it a middle course between Randian laissez-faire and stifling social democracy has built the most free and successful society so far, a phenomenon that has only given rise to accusations of theft on the part of the less successful and envious. It is actually nothing of the sort. It is certainly untidy, untheoretical, ad hoc and disagreeable to the sort of mind who likes things all tied up in pretty packages with bows around them. These feel that they can command prosperity and force it by undoing a theft that never was. And they have found that offering this makes them electable. And it isn't just the Democrats and certainly not just the Americans.
Liberalism is group therapy.
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.