How we got Thanksgiving

"It’s wrong to say that American was founded by capitalists. In fact, America was founded by socialists who had the humility to learn from their initial mistakes and embrace freedom." There are some similarities between the experiences of the Pilgrims and the experiences of some Israelis. But the hard lessons of failed socialism came over a longer time period in Israel.

Communism, Fascism, Capitalism

The State of the Union address brought up the issue of government controls over business. In reviewing the linked article, I found the following observation on where Marx went wrong:

Interestingly, almost everywhere Marxism triumphed: Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc., all skipped the capitalist phase Marx thought pivotal. Instead, they slid straight from pre-industrial feudal conditions into communism; which essentially entailed reversion back to feudalism supplanting the traditional aristocracy with party cronyism – before dissolving into corrupted variants of state capitalism economically similar to fascism.

As usual, Marx got it backwards.

It’s also ironic that even as orthodox Marxism collapsed due to economic paralysis, cultural Marxism predicated on race, sex and identity politics thrives in “Capitalist” America. The multiculturalists substituted race where the Soviets and Maoists saw only class. America’s civic crusade has become political correctness, aka cultural Marxism, preoccupied with race. Socialism wheels around again.

The entire article is very interesting. Recommended.

The Truth Is Out There

Bill Whittle's latest video is out. Like "Open Blogger" notes at Ace of Spades:

Have you ever had an incomplete thought rattling around your mind? You can almost put it into words but it remains elusively amorphous? Bill Whittle has the uncanny ability to take that pile of mental toothpicks and glue them into an Eiffel Tower of reason.

The video starts out a little on the feisty side, with an unflattering characterization of Pacifica Radio. But it gets good at about 4 minutes, and he brings the whole thing together by the end of the piece. Wow.

I keep a button tuned to Pacifica Radio, just to check up on what is going on with the Far Left from time to time. Every once in a while, they have something that sounds reasonable on the station. But they also run some really challenging programming, like interviews of representatives of such victim groups as the "National Man-Boy Love Association" or the "Bondage and Discipline Community" (the latter persecuted more through ridicule and misunderstanding than through legal action. Their feelings are hurt.) I wrote down some of the details of programming I caught before and during May Day last year. Whew.

Dennis Prager has observed that (at least in the United States) people who accept the concept of faith in the realm of religion are more likely to look for realism in other areas of life. Those who reject religion in which God is the final authority on morality often accept the irrational easily in many other aspects of life, including politics. Pacifica Radio is a case in point. I don't think your typical Baptist radio station would be likely to run a program claiming that if you get Lyme disease, you should be grateful that Kudzu vine has taken over the South, because it took over so that it could cure you (how is not clear). The belief that we should listen to the "wisdom of plants" rather than turn to Western Medicine (because it is based too much on reason) is "one of many truths" on Pacifica Radio, where they make fun of Baptists.

So, is there anything you could do to help keep people like those who run Pacifica Radio from taking over the country? In 2010, Bill Whittle wrote an interesting piece called The Iceberg which may give you some ideas.

The "Debt Ceiling Crisis" and the Left's addiction to demonization

Frank J. Fleming has a little fun with the exaggerated language from the Left:

Wow, that whole debt-ceiling debate was scary. For a while there, it looked like a few radical extremists were going to keep the country from going further into debt. And then where would we be? Without all the free stuff we like, because some people are stuck on the primitive notion that a budget should balance? I think you can say without hyperbole that people who think like that are literally terrorists, except a million times worse.

What makes people think the government should spend less money than it brings in? Probably racism. Also, a lust for violence. Because there is no logical reason for the government to spend less. None.

I do know one reason people keep bringing up as to why we should spend less: Because otherwise we leave the debt for future generations. But no one ever explains why that’s a problem.

Read the whole thing. Heh.

The Norwegian massacre and the Left's addiction to demonization

After the terrible Norwegian massacre, the Mainstream Media and others on the Left were quick to label the assassin as a "fundamentalist Christian". But this designation was apparently wishful thinking on the part of the Left which hates "fundamentalist Christianity". Timothy Dalrymple:

What exactly, then, is Breivik’s “Christianity”? He cares not for Christ or Christianity, but for Christendom. Rod Dreher gave perhaps the best definition I’ve seen so far. Breivik, he says, “sees the faith much as the Nazi leadership did: as a European tribal religion that can be instrumentalized to provide the basis for an ethno-cultural war against the Other.” The Nazis were not fond of what Breivik calls “religious Christianity.” Hitler, rightly, did not believe that “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ” would suit his purposes. Personal devotion, a living and breathing relationship with a God who is Love and a Son of God who teaches the love of enemies, does not “instrumentalize” well into the wholesale slaughter of Jews, gypsies, political prisoners and Christian resisters. Neither does it instrumentalize into the murder of 85 innocent children. . . .

Being a Christian can mean many things, Breivik says. It can mean that “you believe in and want to protect Europe’s Christian cultural heritage.” . . . .

Indeed, in his account of the secret meeting that reconstituted the Knights Templar, the largest contingent is “Christian atheist.” . . .

Why the self-appointed guardians of nuance want to ignore these facts — that Breivik was no kind of Christian in the ordinary sense, but more like an agnostic committed to Christian symbols for pragmatic reasons — in their rush to portray Breivik as a “Christian fundamentalist” or “Christianist” (which Andrew Sullivan uses to associate Breivik with conservative American Christians), is a question well worth asking.

Cathy Young presents factual information to counteract the "blame the Jews" theme which has also emerged from the terrorist rampage.  

Clifford May points out the inconsistency of the mainstream media with regard to labeling people as terrorists:

Exploiting atrocities to settle political scores through guilt by association is a nasty game, but if we are going to play it, I’d look elsewhere. I’d start with Reuters or, more precisely, what we might call the Reuters Doctrine. After the attacks of 9/11, there were individuals and groups (emphatically including the policy institute I head) making the case that terrorism should be defined as the use of violence against civilians to further a political cause, and that expressing a grievance by intentionally killing other people’s children is never justified.

We argued that civilized people, of whatever religion or nationality, ought to be able to agree on this principle, and, if they did, then those who target innocents would be seen only as terrorists, unequivocally condemned by the “international community.”

Reuters disagreed. The global news agency took the position that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” This expression of moral relativism was embraced by many in the media, on the far left and far right, in academia, government, and transnational organizations. And that may indeed have paved the way for Breivik — who unquestionably fancies himself a fighter for European freedom — to believe he could use terrorism to focus attention on his grievances without de-legitimizing those grievances. If it works for militant Islamists, why not for a militant Norwegian?

May also includes in his piece a number of helpful notes to young readers concerning the way the mainstream media has changed over the years, as classical liberalism has largely been replaced by leftism (with regard to open-mindedness, the ability to examine one's own positions objectively, support for freedom of speech, etc.) Read the whole thing.

Ten Ways Progressive Policies Harm Society's Moral Character

Agree with him or not, this piece by Dennis Prager is a good example of writing with clarity (I sometimes think his writing would be better with more examples, but I thought this piece was well-written for a short summary). Read the whole thing. As usual with Prager, I didn't find a single "weasel word" in the piece.  Kicker at the end.

If you'd rather watch a video, he did short one with the same theme earlier. I hope that most people would fall somewhere between the extremes in how much government they think is good:   no government (true anarchy with its risks of destruction) and really big government (national or international egalitarian government with its risks of totalitarianism).  But about the only people agitating for anarchy today are faux anarchists who want to see Western Civilization fall so they can build a new, utopian system.  Progressive policies which lead toward really big government, on the other hand, remain popular.  The ten moral downsides which Prager identifies are:

1. The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another.

The greatest description of American civilization was written in the 19th century by the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville. One of the differences distinguishing Americans from Europeans that he most marveled at was how much Americans — through myriad associations — took care of one another.

2. The welfare state, though often well intended, is nevertheless a Ponzi scheme.

As a result, virtually every welfare state in Europe, along with many American states, like California, is going broke.

3. Citizens of liberal welfare states become increasingly narcissistic.

4. The liberal welfare state makes people disdain work.

5. Nothing more guarantees the erosion of character than getting something for nothing.

And the rhetoric of liberalism — labeling each new entitlement a “right” — reinforces this sense of entitlement.

6. The bigger the government, the more the corruption.

Of course, big businesses are also often corrupt. But they are eventually caught or go out of business. The government cannot go out of business. And, unlike corrupt governments, corrupt businesses cannot print money and thereby devalue a nation’s currency, and they cannot arrest you.

7. The welfare state corrupts family life.

8. The welfare state inhibits the maturation of its young citizens into responsible adults.

9. As a result of the Left’s sympathetic views of pacifism, and because almost no welfare state can afford a strong military, European countries rely on America to fight the world’s evils and even to defend them.

10. The leftist weltanschauung sees society’s and the world’s great battle as between rich and poor rather than between good and evil.

This is what produces the morally confused liberal elites that can venerate a Cuban tyranny with its egalitarian society over a free and decent America that has greater inequality.

Bastille Day and La Marseillaise

I was thinking yesterday that it's a wonder that La Marseillaise is still the French National Anthem: "To Arms, Citizens", etc. Doesn't quite fit with the current culture of Social Democracy and multiculturalism in Europe. Does any Western country have a fiestier National Anthem? Or a more rousing one? The version from Casa Blanca reminds us that tyranny is a recurring danger.  On the other hand, Bastille Day also reminds us that revolutions don't always turn out as hoped.  

Walter Russell Meade is on a roll. He has a wonderful piece about the Fall of the Bastille.  

Anyway, for your holiday reflections, five takes on the French Revolution : Charles Dickens, Maximilien Robespierre, Albert Camus, the Marquis de Lafayette and your Via Meadia host.

I hope that a significant percentage of high school and college students still knows who Dickens, Robespierre, Camus and Lafayette were.

Maximilien Robespierre:
If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror.

And of course, terror got a little out of hand during the French Revolution and eventually took even Robespierre's life.* I don't know if Meade intended a connection, but he also put up a short post on the Spirit of Marie Antoinette Alive and Well in the Hamptons. Heh.

* A great deal of the terror came as the result of the attempt to "purify" the country with regard to egalitarianism, (which takes "equality" far beyond the American Founders' emphasis on Equality Before the Law) and other principles which animated the revolutionaries.

It's remarkable to me how many 20th Century tyrants from around the world spent time in Paris before embarking on their careers of tyranny. Many of those tyrants also espoused the idea of "purifying" their own countries. Not something you would expect when visiting modern-day France.

Happy Independence Day

Well, Calvin Coolidge seems to be popular today, on account of his thoughts at the 150th birthday of the Declaration of Independence. Jeff Jacoby discusses President Coolidge's speech:

Since ancient times there had been many revolutions . . . What makes America's founding extraordinary, observed the 30th president, is that it was the first to be based not on blood or soil but on a set of philosophical ideas about the nature of mankind and therefore of government. Other nations have their deepest roots in ethnicity, tribal loyalty, or military conquest. America, uniquely, was dedicated to a proposition - to the fundamental, self-evident truth that all men are created equal and the political ideas that flow from that truth. . . .

Jeff Goldstein has some thoughts on the Constitution today, apparently prompted by a very interesting note from Dr. Larry Arn:

The 4th of July cover article of Time magazine claims that the Constitution is irrelevant.

Frightening. . . .

The Constitution does not allow us to do whatever we want to do. In the words of James Madison, the Constitution was framed out of the belief that “it is the reason, alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government. The passions ought to be controlled and regulated by the government.”

The genius of the Constitution lies in its having a definite meaning on the fundamentals – that every individual has rights, that the people are sovereign, and that the governmental powers must remain separated – while leaving wide latitude to local government, or the people themselves, on issues not specifically addressed in the Constitution. . . .

Liberty. Equality. Self-government.

If the Fourth of July is a celebration of these things, it is a celebration of the Constitution as much as the Declaration of Independence. No constitution in history has proven itself more deeply committed to these principles, and no nation has been more richly blessed in return.

The basic truth within the Constitution is that the government cannot have limitless power, for the simple reason that government is made up of people. A Constitution with no definite meaning gives free reign to the passions of those people within and without the government. A Constitution with a meaning honored and obeyed becomes a guardian of all people, for it sustains a government that is strong within its defined powers but limited in order to protect the liberty and equality of citizens.Instead of scoffing at those Americans concerned that their federal government has overrun its limits in the name of energy and modernity, perhaps Time should consider what an American President said about the principles of the Declaration and the Constitution on the 150th anniversary of July 4th, 1776:

"It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers."

- Calvin Coolidge
July 5, 1926

Read the whole thing. Follow the link to President Coolidge's full speech.  And Goldstein discusses in another post some philosophies which threaten our independence from government tyranny. For example:

The loss of a controlling idea about how interpretation works — how it comes to count as interpretation in the first place — has led us down the path where meaning is determined not by a true appeal to the foundational documents intended to constrain the power of a centralized authority, but rather by a judicial oligarchy, where one vote, determined by nothing more than partisan ideology, a felicity with signifiers, and a supposed unshakable fidelity to prior rulings, takes the place of our Constitution and Declaration as the law of the land for 300 million + people. . . .

We shan’t go down without a fight. Once this country is unrecognizable as this country, the time will come once again to declare our independence. . . .

Or, maybe we could start now to educate children once again about how our country began. There are even some resources available for TV. Remarkably, the token conservative in this round-table, George Will, is allowed to finish his thoughts. He did a good job of defending the Constitution.

Police extorting political support in Wisconsin

Iowahawk:

Wisconsin state employee union woos Wisconsin small business support with threats of severed horse heads

Well, he is a satirist. But union supporters HAVE been "doubling down" on intimidation of local businesses as a crucial election approaches. Among other nasty practices. The videos are interesting. But this is more worrisome - Ann Althouse:

I can’t get my head around the concept of police involvement in boycotting businesses. That reads like pure corruption. I can’t believe it’s being done openly. Can someone explain to me how you can even argue that it is acceptable for police to extort political support from citizens?

Interesting to consider the circumstances under which extortion is effective.

Is California next? The legendary Democrat WILLIE BROWN, who managed California politics for years, is worried about pension costs?