Waltzing on the Titanic

American Thinker ^ | November 15, 2008 | Larrey Anderson

[vietvet67]

America's young people helped elect Barack Obama. Way to go kids! This article is for you. Let's take a look at your future.

We won't need a time machine. We will just need to visit Europe and talk to the youth of France, Italy, and Greece. Don't worry. They won't mind. They have plenty of time to talk. They don't have jobs.

Young people in Western Europe tend to sit around, smoke Marlboro cigarettes, drink espresso (and Coca Cola), and (at least until this election) bitch about America.

They have been taught, since their first day in school, that capitalism is evil -- that the government can, and should, provide health care, employment, and eventually, guaranteed retirement benefits for everyone.

In their leisurely conversations when they have finished condemning capitalism, they go on to praise the idea of socialism. They do not praise their own countries. They are not stupid. The health care stinks. (Young people don't care much about that.) There are no jobs. (But there are unemployment benefits.) And the retirement systems are bankrupt. (But old age is way, way, way in the future.)

So, they argue, in the next election they are going to replace the loser socialists who currently run their countries with some real socialists -- politicians who will finally keep their promises. I heard this discussion in France thirty years ago. I heard it the last time I was in Italy. It is taking place in Greece right now.

The last time I was in Rome I listened as a very bright young man explained to his friends, over lunch at a sidewalk café, what was really going on: Most European countries have become, essentially, plutocracies. The socialist governments give lip service to wealth redistribution but they are tightly interwoven with the "old money" in the banking system and in big business.

This came as no surprise to his educated friends. Their response was (same as it always is): Of course the system is corrupt. We will throw out the old socialists and put in some new ones. It played in their minds like a broken record. I have heard it for years and years and years.

The only thing that stopped the conversation from becoming a perpetual loop was that one of the conversationalists eventually proclaimed, "Ah. But at least we are not America!" The Marlboros got lit up. The espresso amd Coca Cola were sipped. And they got back to the serious business of bashing capitalism.

Well, not all of them. It turned out that the bright young man who had so eloquently described the current corruption was the bus boy at the café. He had a university education ... and a job!

I had the opportunity to speak with one of these young people alone. Actually, this fellow was not so young anymore. He was thirty-four. He still lived with his parents.

He could not afford his own place. His family was having problems even paying their electrical bills.

The reason the price of electricity was so high was that the "greens" had for years stopped the Italian government from building nuclear power plants.

He drove a taxi a few days a week (the only job he could find). He had a girlfriend but could not afford to marry her. He was not planning on having children. But in the next election, he assured me, a brand new socialism was coming. He started to rattle off the names of the experts he had read in the newspapers (and he had studied in the university) who had told him so.

I felt sorry for him. I had had this exact conversation many times before. He was brim full of hope and change.

Listen up young Americans: What is coming to the United States is what has been happening in Europe for decades. The ships of state have smashed into an iceberg called socialism and they are sinking.

This is not a Republican versus Democrat thing. Republicans had ten years to clean up the mess. They made it worse. I don't blame you for wanting to throw the bums out. I did too.

But putting in a new and improved and ever more aggressive socialist like Obama is not the answer. (Don't argue about his socialism. Go to his website and show me some free market proposals.) They have been trying this in Europe for three generations. It has not worked.

That trillion-dollar "bi-partisan" bailout passed by our Congress did not go to the people who cannot make their house payments. It is being handed out to the big bankers and to big business.

That is how socialism works. Politicians, bankers, and big businessmen do an age-old dance in triple time. There is no trickle down economics in socialism. Almost all of the money stays at the top.

America will soon be, like Europe has been, waltzing on the Titanic. Thanks for the dance.

Larrey Anderson is a writer, a philosopher, and submissions editor for American Thinker. His latest award-winning novel is The Order of the Beloved.

[TennMountains]

You can’t TELL they anything but you can teach the history. Make sure they know who Stalin and Mao were. That Hitler was a socialist. About the millions who died when we walked away from Vietnam after EVERYONE said only a few would be killed.

Teach them history and they’ll figure the rest out themselves.

[thesearethetimes...]

Wow, that takes me back, very warm smile. My Dad was a big Pogo fan - “ We have met the enemy....and He is Us.”.

Not so warm smile about the reality of it...

Tatt : /

[visitor]

I was in Prague this past September and everything you have said about Poland can be said about the Czech Republic! After Prague, we traveled throughout Germany and then England, unfortunately, the same can not be said about those two countries.

[EmilyGeiger]

Around here most of the young and stupids voted McCain...it was the old and stupids that voted Obama, which just confuses me! I can understand a young person voting with their heart but when an older person, who should know better does it, well I’m just shocked. Of course most of them were of the hippie generation and there are not as many of the greatest generation left.....

[yazoo]

Trying to argue logic with some people is impossible. I have a sister in law who lives in Canada. Whenever she needs an elective, but necessary for quality of life, surgical procedure she comes to the US and pays for it. Either she can’t get the procedure in Canada or the wait is forever. While she is here she spends all her time telling me how bad it is in the US and how terrible it is that we don’t have socialized medicine. She is beyond seeing the absurdity of her argument.

[Quix]

[frithguild]

That is how socialism works. Politicians, bankers, and big businessmen do an age-old dance in triple time. There is no trickle down economics in socialism. Almost all of the money stays at the top.

This really says it all.

[jonno]

re: Pole & Czech youths:

Thanks for providing a ray of hope this AM.

[a real Sheila]

OOPS!
I meant 18-25 yr. old!
It was an early morning....

[Robert DeLong]

Or drinking coke.

[Dixie Yooper]

There is no trickle down economics in socialism

There is trickle down in socialism, job loss, misery and poverty find their way to the bottom and corrupts the spirit of all that it touches. Once everything worth fighting for is stripped from us, we will give up the will to fight.

[Mmmike]

I don’t call avoiding broadcast news “denial.” I call it an excellent first step in writing off the status quo so we can work on building a new America from the ground up, undistracted by false hopes about what’s taking place around us.

[Bigh4u2]

:)

[Mountain Troll]

Many people won’t believe the whip exists until they feel it on their own backs. That’s just human nature. But to deny the existence of the whip while the blood still runs down their backs is unnatural.

[ruthles]

I am not that educated on politics; I hated Poli sci in college. But since the recount, I have been trying to understand the left and right arguments. I had a freeper explain that the uber rich like Kerry, Soros, etc. actually want socialism. I couldn’t understnd that because of the taxes involved. This article refers to the fact that Old Money, banks and big business are pro socialism because their money does NOT trickle down. It stays in their hands. How is that so??????

[vietvet67]

“How is that so??????”

Not sure but I assume the likes of Kerry, Soros, Kennedy, etc. have their wealth in tax advantaged vehicles like trusts.

As to banks and businesses under socialism, I have no idea.

[andy58-in-nh]

There is only one way to teach one of those kids anything: kick them out of the house. Make them work for a living. I know: how “cruel” of me.

[AZLiberty]

Interesting American Thinker comment from "Leslie", especially the Trudeau analogy (and how long it took the pendulum to swing back -- 40 years!):

As a Canadian, I have a view on the dangers of socialism because this country has been there. We're somewhere between the U.S. and Europe. In the 60's , we went through Trudeaumania, as you are going through Obamamania. Trudeau was a French Canadian, an elitist, one with a thin record before becoming PM and somebody who had 'style'. The kids loved him and the adults went along for the ride. Interestingly, he named one of his sons Sasha, which is the nickname for Alexander or Alexandra and is obviously, a Russian name. Sound familiar?

He palled around with Castro and his useless vacuous wife raved that Fidel had such beautiful eyes. He hated Israel and the U.S. It's the same package, different country, different decade. He complained that Canada had too many plumbers and not enough poets. And he gave Canadians the middle finger, but it wasn't hidden.

Since the 60s, Canada has been in a socialist trance. There has only been 2 Conservative MPs (one lasted a very short time) until the election of our present PM, Stephen Harper. Harper has managed to unite the Right, which had consisted of a decimated conservative party and a new reform party. Sadly, it is now difficult to obtain a majority government because urban Ontario is beholden to unions and Quebecer svote for a French separatist party so they can extract as many goodies as possible from the gov't.

The real problem, though is the leftist bent of Canadians, particularly of the youth. They have been raised on it and get a hefty dose of it at university. The campuses here are plagued by leftist bias. The media is extremely biased. The results for us have not been good. Our healthcare system is suffering - there are long waits for cancer care and there are not enough family physicians because care is portioned. There was actually a lottery in the province of Newfoundland for people to enter to get a chance to have a GP because two had come to town.

BUT - don't despair because I thought things were hopeless here and the Canadian people, despite their bias, had the sense to vote for a conservative gov't. The pendulum does swing. What's important is for the Republicans to find the right candidates. I don't know that recycled warmed-over, lost last time, are going to do it.