viernes, 22 de febrero de 2019

Legitimizing insane ideas ...


How The Left Tricks People Into Thinking Socialism Is Plausible


By William F. Marshall


If you want to effect radical change that politicians will vote for, don’t try to convince the politicians directly, but shift what is considered socially acceptable by legitimizing insane ideas.

What on earth has happened to the Democratic Party? Even by liberal standards, the policies the left now advocates appear insane. To say they are an order of fries short of a Happy Meal is an insult to McDonald’s.

I’m used to childishness from the Democratic Party, but something is very wrong in the Land of Unicorns and Fairy Dust. Is all of this just the usual hyper-liberal reaction to a Republican presidency, or is there something more insidious and dangerous at work? Tthe latter may be the case, in the form of something called the Overton Window Principle. Let’s recap the last several weeks in Lala-Land.

Consider the “Green New Deal” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez supports. Her resolution before Congress calls for America to entirely divest itself of fossil fuels within ten years. This is such a ludicrous proposal that anyone with a scintilla of common sense or over the age of 25 should burst out laughing when informed of it.

A Frequently Asked Questions page that appeared on Ocasio-Cortez’s website before it was taken down actually said: “We set a goal to get to that net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast…” That is a real quote from an actual document posted to a bona fide congresswoman’s real-life website.

Yes, it’s uproariously stupid, funny, and deserving of ridicule by Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Chris Plante, and all the other entertaining commentators on conservative talk radio. Ocasio-Cortez is an endless source of fun, and I hope there’s a microphone nearby every time she opens her mouth. May she be the one Democrat who has a long and voluble career in Washington.

But here’s the concerning part: as of a week ago, 67 adult members of Congress signed on to support Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. Moreover, her ridiculous plan has been mirrored by a Senate resolution sponsored by a wizened, crusty old Democrat machine politician, Sen. Edward Markey, who has decades of legislative experience and surely knows how absurd the Green New Deal’s provisions are.

The Method Behind the Madness

So what gives? Has Markey lost his marbles? Not only that, have all the other Democrat luminaries running for president who have endorsed the GND—like Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar—lost their minds as well?

It’s within the realm of possibility that Donald Trump has finally succeeded in snapping the tenuous hold these leftist politicians have on reality. But it might be explained by the Overton Window theory.

I first learned of this sociological principle several years ago when I came across an entertaining novel by Glenn Beck called “The Overton Window.” Beck’s protagonists are a “radical” band of conservatives who are desperately trying to thwart the socialist takeover of America in a dystopian future. In his tale, Beck’s protagonists have grasped that the evil socialists—the Ocasio-Cortezes of the future—have employed a technique to move society unwittingly further and further to the left, where more and more government control of society becomes acceptable. Although serving as a literary device for Beck in a work of fiction, this technique is a very real theory of mass psychology manipulation.

The Overton Window theory was developed by an engineer-turned-lawyer and political theorist Joseph P. Overton, who tragically died young in a plane crash. His theoretical contributions may long outlive him. He developed his eponymous theory while he was a senior official for the free market think tank Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

In simplest terms, the Overton Window theory—more fully, the Overton Window of Political Possibilities—posits that in a republic such as ours, where politicians are at least partly accountable to their constituents, there is a band, or “window,” of policy options that a politician can propose or vote for in any particular area of social policy. That window is governed by what the politician’s constituents find socially acceptable to consider.

While there may be better or worse policy options outside of that window, the politician won’t risk his career by proposing or voting for them, resulting in a backlash from his voters. The politician will always put his personal political fortunes foremost. Sounds pretty commonsense, right?

Well, here’s what Overton recognized: If you want to effect radical change that politicians will buy into and vote for, what you need to do is not try to convince the politicians directly, but shift the political landscape of what is considered socially acceptable to discuss or ponder. That is to say, you expand the “window” of policy options by getting the “people”—or a large enough proportion of them—to buy into your radical ideas and talk about them. That’s much easier to accomplish today with the explosion of social media.

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Barack Obama said as recently as 2008 that he believed “marriage is between a man and a woman.” Hillary Clinton said in 2004 that marriage was “a sacred bond between a man and a woman.” Yet somehow, by 2013 both politicians had discovered their long-held views on the sanctity of one man-one woman marriage were 180 degrees off-kilter and supported same-sex marriage. If one believes Washington Post-ABC News polling data, American support for same-sex marriage flipped in the span of 10 years, going from 59 percent opposing it in 2004 to 59 percent approving it in 2014.

A similarly rapid transformation occurred with the embrace of legislation decriminalizing marijuana use. The percentage of Americans who answered “Yes” to the question “Do you think the use of marijuana should be made legal, or not?” went from 31 percent in 2000 to 66 percent in 2018, according to Gallup.

The left in America railed for decades against the evils of the tobacco industry, which produced those nasty, cancer-causing “nicotine delivery systems” known as cigarettes. They very successfully waged legal warfare against tobacco, resulting in a decline in tobacco use in America from a high of 42 percent of American adults smoking in the early 1960s to a current low of about 14 percent of American adults smoking.

Yet somehow that same left that demonized tobacco has embraced marijuana, a smoking product that I learned in Drug Enforcement Agency school many years ago is far worse in its health impact than tobacco on multiple levels, from its carcinogenic effects to cognitive damage to neurological impairment. But state houses are legalizing marijuana like it’s the new gold rush.

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Read more: thefederalist.com

South Africa has squandered its opportunities and is on the path to becoming a failed state.


10 Scary Facts Indicating South Africa Is Becoming The Next Venezuela


South Africa has squandered its opportunities and is on the path to becoming a failed state. Government profiteering, race tensions, and shortages are ruining the country.



It has been a quarter-century since South Africans of all colors and creeds lined up with each other to patiently wait their turn to vote for their first government that was not dependent on brutal racial engineering.

In 1994 the country was a coiled spring ready to unleash enormous latent economic and human potential. As South West Africa became Namibia and the legal edifices of apartheid were swept away, South Africa suddenly had the opportunities and goodwill that had been denied it for the better part of 30 years.

All that promise is gone. South Africa has squandered its opportunities and is on the path to becoming a failed state. These are the top ten reasons, in no particular order, why South Africa is becoming the next Venezuela.


1. Greedy European Arms Merchants


2. Blue Light Convoys


3. Imitating Brazil’s Carwash Corruption Scandal


4. White Shoe Mercenaries


5. Promising Anti-White Genocide


6. Switching Off the Lights


7. Retirement Delayed


8. Virtue-Signaling and Vanity Projects


9. Education Quackery


10. Affirmative-Action Absurdities



L´Europa: Radici, Identita e Futuro -Verona 22 Febbraio 2019 ore: 20:45

Seconda sessione del corso di Dottrina Sociale della Chiesa Mater Ecclesia

The way that beauty conquers nihilism, and affirms reality, being, and truth ...


Beauty: A Necessity, Not a Luxury




by Fr. Charles Klamut


Just when I am about to succumb to the sadness and living death of nihilism, some piercing ray of beauty breaks open my heart, and the breath of possibility returns. I recently visited the Botanical Garden in St Louis. Amid the sights and smells, the colors and creatures, the sun, the architecture, and the sheer gratuity of so much botanical diversity, I felt happy to be alive. Drinking it in, I turned to a friend and said, “How could we live without this?” He replied, “We couldn’t.”

I’ve been thinking about this little exchange. Upon reflection, I am becoming certain that they are not just sentimental words, but the truth. And with this conviction, I’m not alone.

Luigi Giussani, the great 20th century priest, educator, and writer (and whose cause for canonization has just begun), insisted throughout his great life on our need for beauty; for beautiful, real things which have the power to awaken our hearts. During Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s homily for Fr Giussani’s funeral in 2005, two months shy of his unsuspected elevation to the papacy, he said that Fr Giussani was “wounded by the desire for beauty.” He noted how much Fr Giussani loved music, and said that, in looking for Beauty itself, he was looking for Christ.

In Giussani, we have an author whose books overflow with quotations from poets, novelists and philosophers; a priest whose ministry to students often took place on hikes through the Alps; a teacher who raised the eyebrows of colleagues by walking into the classroom at Berchet High School, back in his early days of teaching, carrying a phonograph with records of Chopin and Beethoven, in order to provoke his students with the wound of beauty. Jesus said: “You will know them by their fruits.” By sharing his own wound for beauty with his students, the fruit of Giussani has become a movement in the church called: Communion and Liberation, which has moved the hearts of its members in almost 100 countries now.

Giussani is not the only modern day Catholic luminary to champion the cause of beauty. On Easter Sunday, 1999, Pope John Paul II issued his “Letter to Artists.” This profound document is not just for artists, but for everyone, offering a deep reflection on the mystery of the human person and the innate human need for beauty. According to Blessed John Paul II, beauty offers “a momentary glimpse of the vastness of light that has its original wellspring in God” (# 7). The Pope says that “every genuine art form, in its own way, is a path to the inmost reality of the human being and the world. It is, therefore, a wholly valid approach to the realm of faith, which gives human experience its ultimate meaning” (# 7).

The Pope goes through a brief historical sketch of the many ways the Gospel has inspired “epiphanies” of beauty which artists have shared with the Church and the world. He speaks favorably of the enormously fruitful alliance between faith and art, and between the Church and artists, and has sections entitled, “The Church Needs Art” and “Does Art Need the Church?”(to which he answers a resounding “yes!”).

He links true art with an authentic Christian humanism, saying:“Even beyond its typically religious expressions, true art has a close affinity with the world of faith, so that, even in situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience. Insofar as it seeks the beautiful, as the fruit of an imagination which rises above the everyday, art is by its nature a kind of appeal to the Mystery” (# 10).

The Pope also said that, in light of Vatican II, we need to build on the foundation laid there for “a renewed relationship between the Church and culture.” Art is a privileged way of doing this. Quoting Vatican II, he said, “This world needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart, and is that precious fruit which resists the erosion of time, which unites generations and enables them to be one in admiration” (# 11, quoting from a talk given by Council Fathers at the end of Vatican II).

Pope Benedict XVI shares his predecessor’s views on the importance of art and beauty in the life of faith. As Cardinal Ratzinger, he made some comments along these lines which are very inspiring. In a message to members of Communion and Liberation in 2002, he said “Christian art today… must oppose the cult of the ugly.” He spoke of the “wound” of beauty which inspires and provokes man with nostalgia for his transcendent destiny. 

He quotes Plato’s “Phaedrus,” reflecting as follows:
Plato contemplates the encounter with beauty as the salutary emotional shock that makes man leave his shell and sparks his “enthusiasm” by attracting him to what is other than himself. Man, says Plato, has lost the original perfection that was conceived for him. He is now perennially searching for the healing primitive form. Nostalgia and longing impel him to pursue the quest; beauty prevents him from being content with just daily life. It causes him to suffer. In the Platonic sense, we could say that the arrow of nostalgia pierces man, wounds him and, in this way, gives him wings, lifts him upwards toward the transcendent … The beautiful wounds, but this is exactly how it summons man to his final destiny.
He describes an experience he had at a Bach concert he attended with his friend, Lutheran Bishop Hanselmann: “When the last note triumphantly faded away, we looked at each other spontaneously, and right then we said: ‘Anyone who has heard this, knows that the faith is true.’ The music had such an extraordinary force of reality that we realized, no longer by deduction, but by the impact with our hearts, that it could not have originated from nothingness, but could only have come to be through the power of the Truth that became real in the composer’s inspiration.” He is describing the way that beauty conquers nihilism, and affirms reality, being, and truth. Ratzinger is not content to dwell just on artistic beauty. He goes on to speak of the beauty of holiness, and its power to convince a skeptical world weary of words. “I have often affirmed my conviction that the true apology of Christian faith, the most convincing demonstration of its truth against every denial, are the saints, and the beauty that the faith has generated. Today, for faith to grow, we must lead ourselves, and the persons we meet, to encounter the saints, and to enter into contact with the Beautiful.”

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Read more: theimaginativeconservative.org

Had the costs of war and revolution been understood, Russia might have avoided much of what it suffered over the 20th century


Hell Is Truth Realized Too Late: Russia and the Legacy of World War I


by WILLIAM ANTHONY HAY


Grandiose projects and messianic ambitions have too high a price, especially when modernizing a backward country offers enough to do.



Thomas Hobbes notoriously described hell as truth realized too late. Russia’s entry into World War I and the events that followed bring out the phrase’s meaning while highlighting the importance of balancing risk. Decisions in 1914 brought Russia into a conflict that strained its economy, political structure and social cohesion beyond the breaking point. Defeat brought collapse and then revolution followed by a brutal civil war. Totalitarian dictatorship brought order through terror. A crash program of industrialization provided the means to avoid defeat in World War II, but stagnation followed until the Soviet Union collapsed under its own contradictions at the end of the Cold War. Had the costs of war and revolution been understood, Russia might have avoided much of what it suffered over the 20th century.

Several Russian statesmen before World War I who realized the danger of conflict brought by assertive foreign policies instead urged a defensive strategy focused on economic development. Their arguments make important points for understanding the country’s history and its present outlook. Petr Stolypin, the premier who guided the country’s recovery from the 1905 Revolution, viewed anything other than such a cautious approach as insanity sure to put the Romanov dynasty’s survival at risk. His reforms sought to build a patriotic civil society, partly through agrarian measures favoring peasant proprietors who improved their land from profits in a market economy. Such a bet on the strong, as Stolypin described it, required time and stability to bring the stability he anticipated. Serge Witte, his predecessor, also believed Russia needed a generation of peace to realize its economic potential. Vladimir Kokovtsov, who combined the roles of finance minister and premier, thought an assertive policy beyond the country’s means fundamentally unnecessary. Developing Russia’s existing territories provided ample scope for its people’s energies so long as peace allowed them to do it. Responsibility for domestic rather than foreign affairs made all these men sharply aware of Russia’s true state and resources.

Durnovo’s Plea
Petr Durnovo, a former interior minister who had reasserted the government’s authority during the upheaval of the 1905 Revolution, made the most insightful case for restraint with a memorandum given to Nicholas II in February 1914. Besides predicting a long war and the strains it would bring, he demonstrated a shrewd grasp of Russia’s predicament from long experience with the country’s internal affairs. His brief memorandum rewards consideration both for the range of topics covered and for anticipating the deluge that overwhelmed the Tsarist regime. It also sharpens the question of why Nicholas and his ministers chose to risk war later that year.

Nobody would mistake Durnovo as a friend to liberty. A former director of police for a decade, he resigned over a scandal at Alexander III’s insistence, though the misstep did not derail his career. After stepping down from the interior ministry, Durnovo led the most hard right faction within the State Council. His outlook reflected a brand of Russian conservatism that Richard Pipes has described as operating along different lines from its counterparts elsewhere in Europe or the Anglophone world. It emphasized state power, which needed no constraint by the impartial rule of law, while recognizing how fragile tsarism’s brittle authority was. On this view, only the tsar could hold selfish elites in check and uphold the common good. Rather than establishing self-government, political change in the absence of civil society would instead produce a social revolution. Hence the almost Hobbesian preoccupation with order in Russian conservatism that Durnovo’s outlook reflects.

His concern with preserving order focused Durnovo on the question of what Russia gained from a foreign policy that set the country on the path to armed conflict. Framing the international scene in terms of an Anglo-German rivalry driven by commercial interests but grounded in a clash between their respective liberal and conservative orientations, he warned that aligning Russia with a British led coalition threatened to involve it in a prolonged war. It also sacrificed important regional interests along Russia’s extensive periphery, notably Persia, Central Asia, and the frontier with China, to rapprochement with London. Before this step, Durnovo argued Russia had combined a defensive alliance with France—which assured assistance if attacked without a blank check pledging military force to actions by either partner—and friendly relations with Prussia to help keep the peace. France had a guarantee from attack by Germany, which likewise had protection from French revenge by Russia’s commitment to peace. Germany restrained Austria from intrigues against Russian interests in the Balkans, while isolation kept Britain in check. Now, with that balance of power upset, in Durnovo’s view, by Russia giving up its defensive policy to align with Britain, the country stood on the wrong side of a looming war.

Russians had seen Britain as a geopolitical rival since the late 18th century with Napoleonic France and even the United States as possible counterweights. Indeed, resentment of British maritime supremacy spurred cooperation or at least sympathy between St Petersburg and Washington despite the ideological gap between Tsarist Russia and the United States. Durnovo’s memorandum also raises a common charge among Continental European conservatives in complaining that “England, monarchic and conservative to the marrow at home, has in her foreign relations always acted as the protector of the most demagogical tendencies, invariably encouraging all popular movements aiming at the weakening of the monarchial principle.” Hostility toward Britain slanted his reading of international politics. Durnovo also misreads German intentions, underestimating the ambitions of its elites along with France’s willingness to accept war as the price of recovering losses from their earlier defeat by Prussia in 1871. His slanted read on foreign politics makes it the weakest part of the analysis.

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Read more: www.lawliberty.org

miércoles, 20 de febrero de 2019

Sur beaucoup de sujets, la guerre des idées est gagnée. Comment transformer cette victoire des idées en victoire politique ?


Notre système est moins une démocratie, aujourd’hui, qu’une forme de gestion d’experts en matière d’économie


Par Michel Janva


Interrogée dans Présent, Marion Maréchal, directrice de l’Institut de sciences sociales, économiques et politiques (ISSEP), déclare :

[…] A l’origine de la création de l’école, il y a le constat de la faillite des élites françaises, en partie explicable par le type de formations supérieures qu’elles reçoivent, mais également à l’entre-soi sociologique extrêmement prononcé dans lequel elles demeurent. La question des idées est bien sûr fondamentale, mais la question des hommes n’est pas à négliger. L’ISSEP, par ses choix pédagogiques, veut apporter une réponse neuve à ce problème.

Lors d’un discours devant les étudiants d’Oxford, le 22 janvier, vous avez dit que le populisme peut être de gauche ou de droite. Comment se définit-il alors ?

Le populisme est polymorphe. L’unanimité sur sa définition n’existe pas, mais les critères qui ressortent sont les suivants : la dénonciation d’un système accaparé par les élites, la figure d’un chef charismatique, l’appui sur les classes pauvres, la défense d’une démocratie directe, idéalisée, qui est le corollaire des failles du système représentatif. 

Qu’il soit de gauche ou de droite se définit sur d’autres champs : le rapport à la nation, à la famille, à l’identité. Le populisme, par bien des aspects, est relativement insaisissable, et dans la bouche de ceux qui le combattent, c’est un outil de délégitimation : populisme rimerait avec démagogie et flatterie des bas instincts du peuple. Ce qui laisse entendre que l’élite n’aurait que de hauts instincts… 

Je pense que le populisme est un retour à la politique. Notre système dit de démocratie libérale est moins une démocratie, aujourd’hui, qu’une forme de gestion d’experts en matière d’économie. Celle-ci en est venue à primer sur le politique, approche qui a de vieilles origines, fondées sur un mensonge anthropologique, celui de Hobbes : l’homme est un loup pour l’homme, qui ne serait mû que par l’égoïsme et l’intérêt personnel. L’économie, considérée de façon neutre, serait ce qu’il y a de mieux pour réguler les rapports humains.

Cette vision est celle que défend l’Union européenne : on gère les choses, on ne gouverne pas les hommes, d’où certainement le malaise des peuples qui se sentent délaissés. A l’opposé, nous préférons la définition aristotélicienne selon laquelle l’homme est par nature un animal politique. Le mouvement des Gilets jaunes peut donc s’interpréter comme un appel au retour de la politique et à une remise en cause de ce système libéral – que je ne confonds pas avec l’économie de marché et la liberté d’entreprendre –, système hérité des Lumières avec son universalisme qui fait qu’on ne considère toutes choses qu’au prisme d’une raison universelle abstraite alors que la nature humaine est d’abord enracinée, locale, et liée au particulier.

Cette remise en cause a-t-elle des chances d’être entendue par les élites ?

Tout dépend de l’attitude de ces élites. L’Angleterre connaît de fortes divisions au sujet du Brexit, avec des négociations abruptes, mais les élites respectent le vote du peuple. La France, elle, n’a pas le même comportement, et face à des élites sourdes il ne faut pas s’étonner de voir s’étendre une forme radicale de contestation. Les élites ont-elles le ressort nécessaire ? Elles sont animées d’un profond mépris de classe. Lors du débat organisé par Hanouna avec Marlène Schiappa, on a compris qu’elles sont contre la démocratie directe, contre le référendum d’initiative populaire, contre la proportionnelle, mais trouvent géniale une « hanounacratie » qui serait une démocratie de divertissement télévisuel. Nos élites pensent, sans s’en cacher, que le peuple n’est pas assez raisonnable pour qu’on lui confie son destin. Cela est si profond en eux qu’ils n’auront pas le ressort, je le crains, de changer d’attitude en apportant une réponse humaine au mouvement des Gilets jaunes.

Quel avenir pour ces Gilets jaunes, d’ici les élections européennes du 26 mai ?

C’est difficile à dire. Le mouvement est en train de pourrir, phagocyté par l’extrême gauche, dans les manifestations parisiennes du moins. C’est elle qui a été à l’origine des violences, mais cela a peut-être rendu service au mouvement, en tout cas au début, car s’il n’y avait eu violences et débordements, le gouvernement n’aurait pas daigné prendre les Gilets jaunes en considération. Je ne fais pas l’apologie de la violence, mais on a vu les résultats, ou l’absence de résultats, des Manifs pour Tous. Le mouvement des Gilets jaunes, s’éteindrait-il maintenant, aura de toutes façons des répercussions à long terme. 

Les élites ont été bousculées dans leur confort par une classe délaissée sur laquelle reposent tous les efforts nationaux.On oublie que l’Italie, en 2013, a connu un mouvement similaire, les Forconi (« les porteurs de fourches »). Il est né des taxes sur le carburant, avec la même sociologie, les mêmes modes d’action, et les deux partis qui l’avaient soutenu étaient la Ligue et Cinq étoiles.

L’Italie a pour vous valeur d’exemple ?


Tout n’est pas comparable entre l’Italie et la France, mais l’Italie prouve que la volonté politique, quand elle est mise en œuvre, a des résultats significatifs. Elle restera hélas très isolée tant que la France ne fera pas le choix de défendre les opprimés de l’Union européenne. Il y a peu de contributeurs nets au sein de l’UE : l’Italie, l’Angleterre qui est sur le départ, l’Autriche qui est tenue par l’Allemagne, l’Allemagne qui n’a pas toujours des intérêts convergents avec les nôtres, les Pays-Bas qui ne sont pas réellement une force – quant aux pays de Wisegrad, ils n’ont pas les moyens économiquement et démographiquement d’imposer un leadership. La France le pourrait, elle, puisque depuis 1956, pas une seule directive européenne n’est passée sans son accord. Je suis optimiste : on pourrait imaginer demain un nouveau leadership européen avec une alliance franco-italienne.

Peut-on arriver à un résultat en France sans la fameuse « union des droites », thème rebattu ?

Ne nous perdons pas dans les querelles sémantiques et les clubs de réflexion. Sur beaucoup de sujets fondamentaux, la guerre des idées est gagnée. Comment transformer cette victoire des idées en victoire politique ? Cela passe, j’en suis convaincue, par des combats électoraux mais aussi culturels. L’union des droites, je la vois comme une union de personnes ayant une vision commune. La gauche chasse en meute, ce qui lui donne depuis des décennies un avantage compétitif non négligeable. Il faut penser en mouvements qui coalisent des forces en vue d’une victoire. Sur ce point, la génération montante n’a pas la même vision des choses que les générations attachées aux partis politiques.

Comment mène-t-on le combat culturel, domaine où la gauche ne lâche rien ?

La gauche détient tous les leviers de « pensée » : éducation, médias, films… Elle les détient à cause de la démission de la droite, en grande partie. Le combat consiste à proposer des alternatives concrètes dans la société civile. En France, on pense la politique par le haut, mentalité verticale et jacobine. Aux Etats-Unis, on pratique la politique par le bas, avec des investissements méta-politiques qui se traduisent par des écoles, des médias, des fondations… Ces réseaux, cumulés, finissent par avoir un poids réel dans la vie du pays. N’oublions pas que l’histoire est écrite par les minorités agissantes. […]

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Lire la suite: www.lesalonbeige.fr

The temptation of both Ponzi schemes and socialism are based on two seductive factors common to both fantasie


Ponzi Schemes and Socialism Rely on the Same Economic Snake Oil



The “democratic socialists” of today, like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and AOC, are trying to sell you “the economic snake oil of socialism.”

by Mark J. Perry



Below is an excerpt from George Will’s op-ed in Friday's Washington Post, “It’s common to praise socialism. It’s rarer to define it,” (bold added) that starts with this summary of Marxist/socialist philosophy from Karl Marx: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
After many subsequent dilutions, today’s watery conceptions of socialism amount to this: Almost everyone will be nice to almost everyone, using money taken from a few. This means having government distribute, according to its conception of equity, the wealth produced by capitalism. This conception is shaped by muscular factions: the elderly, government employees unions, the steel industry, the sugar growers, and so on and on and on. Some wealth is distributed to the poor; most goes to the “neglected” middle class. Some neglect: The political class talks of little else.
Two-thirds of the federal budget (and 14% of gross domestic product) goes to transfer payments, mostly to the non-poor. The U.S. economy’s health-care sector (about 18% of the economy) is larger than the economies of all but three nations and is permeated by government money and mandates. Before the Affordable Care Act was enacted, 40 cents of every health-care dollar was the government’s 40 cents. The sturdy yeomanry who till America’s soil? Last year’s 529-pageAgriculture Improvement Act will be administered by the Agriculture Department, which has about one employee for every 20 American farms.
Today’s angrier socialists rail, with specificity and some justification, against today’s “rigged” system of government in the service of the strong. But as the Hoover Institution’s John H. Cochrane (a.k.a. the Grumpy Economist) says, “If the central problem is rent-seeking, abuse of the power of the state, to deliver economic goods to the wealthy and politically powerful, how in the world is more government the answer?”
The “boldness” of today’s explicit and implicit socialists — taxing the “rich” — is a perennial temptation of democracy: inciting the majority to attack an unpopular minority. This is socialism now: From each faction according to its vulnerability, to each faction according to its ability to confiscate.

What a TV Show Can Teach Us About Socialism

I’ve lately been recording and watching episodes of the fascinating CNBCseries American Greed. I’ve noticed a common theme in these episodes, and perhaps that theme is one explanation for the eternal fascination with, and perpetual attraction to, the fantasies of “getting something for nothing” and “prosperity for everybody without sacrifice” known as “democratic socialism.” As I wrote in my 1995 article “Why Socialism Failed":
Socialism is the Big Lie of the twentieth century. While it promised prosperity, equality, and security, it delivered poverty, misery, and tyranny. Equality was achieved only in the sense that everyone was equal in his or her misery.
In the same way that a Ponzi scheme or chain letter initially succeeds but eventually collapses, socialism may show early signs of success. But any accomplishments quickly fade as the fundamental deficiencies of central planning emerge. It is the initial illusion of success that gives government intervention its pernicious, seductive appeal. In the long run, socialism has always proven to be a formula for tyranny and misery.

The fascinating common theme I’ve observed in episodes of American Greed is the ubiquitous fallibility of even well-educated and financially-successful people for the financial Ponzi schemes of serial con artists. In episode after episode of American Greed, there are countless examples of Americans with life savings of $1 million or more who have fallen prey to the seductive, financial Ponzi schemes promoted by skilled investment con artists and who then lose their entire life savings. As I wrote in 1995:
The temptress of socialism is constantly luring us with the offer: “give up a little of your freedom and I will give you a little more security.” As the experience of this century has demonstrated, the bargain is tempting but never pays off. We end up losing both our freedom and our security.

Likewise, the seductive temptress of “financial get rich quick schemes” is constantly luring gullible Americans, even those with substantial life savings in the millions of dollars that characterize somebody who has worked hard and been financially successful, with the offer from the financial con artists profiled on American Greed: “Give me your millions of dollars in life savings, and I will generate higher-than-market returns for you and make your rich.” As the experiences of thousands of victims of Ponzi schemes so clearly demonstrate, the bargain of abnormally high returns and guaranteed easy riches is tempting, but it never pays off in the long run. Investors eventually lose all of their money, and their financial security evaporates.

Socialism Is a Scam
Like the con artists profiled on American Greed (now mostly incarcerated) the “democratic socialists” of today, like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and AOC, are trying to sell you “the economic snake oil of socialism” that is as worthless and bankrupt in the long run as the numerous Ponzi schemes being profiled regularly on American Greed that leave investors penniless.

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Read more: fee.org

GLENN MOOTS on Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism.

The University Bookman
Reviewing Books that Build Culture

THIS WEEK IN THE BOOKMAN

 RYAN BARILLEAUX on dystopias real and imagined.
 GLENN MOOTS on Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism.
 TITUS TECHERA on master animator Hayao Miyazaki:
Miyazaki seems to hesitate among the three elements of his thought: the innocence of children, the apocalyptic power of adults, and the possible grace of the world, beyond our power to control or predict. The reason for his hesitation can also be understood if we understand these elements. He cannot choose between adults and children without declaring, implicitly, that mankind is naturally evil or that evil is in fact an accident to be overcome.
 JOSEPH BOTTUM and BENJAMIN JONES on the new Churchill biography.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

 ANTHONY BARR on the recent book from Senator Ben Sasse.
 MICHAEL SCHINDLER on Lingis’s art of living and dying well.
 STEVEN KNEPPER on the poetry of James Matthew Wilson.
 FATHER JAMES SCHALL on Tolkien.
 BEN REINHARD on The Fall of Gondolin.
 ADDISON DEL MASTRO reviews Brookhiser’s life of John Marshall.
 MICHAEL BRENNAN on what Andrew Bacevich can teach us.

BOOKMAN CONTRIBUTORS ELSEWHERE

 JOSEPH BOTTUM on the spiritual shape of political ideas.
 STEPHEN SCHMALHOFER on the Bodleian.
 MICAH MEADOWCROFT on how Rome fell.
 JOHN BYRON KUHNER on porcine Latin.