‘You Didn’t Build That’ and the Darkness of Collective Punishment
As Obama’s “you didn’t build that” quote is probed and analyzed, note that the idea of redistributing other people’s achievements is only the tip of an ideological iceberg.
Lest we take Obama’s words out of context and be accused of “swift-quoting,” let’s review the full passage. Speaking at a campaign stop in Roanoke, VA, on July 13, Barack Obama said:
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.
Per a friend of mine with a Ph.D. in mathematics:
We scientists say that in order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first build the universe — and that takes about four billion years. But that doesn’t mean we can’t build anything new from existing resources. So telling a businessman “you didn’t build that” is pure sophistry. Such phrases have always been a preamble to looting. Coming from the president, it’s chilling.
Apart from the simple untruth that “government created the Internet,” Obama’s words boil down to the collectivist bromide that the individual is nothing without the society and the state. As one would expect, Obama didn’t come up with it on his own. Standing on the shoulders of his collectivist predecessors, he ineptly restated Mussolini’s motto:
All individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State.
Benito’s fellow collectivist Adolf Hitler agrees:
Our nation can achieve permanent health only from within on the basis of the principle: The common interest before self-interest.
If the businessman “didn’t build that,” who did? Apparently, all of us did. And if the credit is equally shared, so must be the reward. Jackpot winners all, no more worries about paying the mortgage or filling the gas tank. This thrilled Obama’s voters during the 2008 election, as his speeches removed moral barriers protecting other people’s property, establishing a new morality of forced redistribution of wealth — previously known as looting.
But here’s the catch: everything in this world has a price. If all of us can be credited for someone else’s achievement, by the same logic, all of us can be punished for someone else’s failure. Just as all individual credit goes to the society as a whole, so does all the blame. And if the entire group, class, nation, or race can gain moral authority because some of its members did something right, the same standard grants the moral authority to blame any other group, class, nation, or race because some of its members did something wrong. In the history of collectivism this concept translated into wars, slavery, pogroms, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, expropriation of wealth, deportation, internment, resettlement, and genocide.
The two notions, collective achievement and collective punishment, are as inseparable as two sides of a coin.
But there’s more: if nothing is to your credit, then nothing is your fault. What is the cost of that bargain? In a seemingly fair trade-off, we lose our right to individual achievements but gain the right to blame others for our failures. Collectivism provides us with a sufficiently analgesic illusion of fairness. If you turn out to be a loser, it’s not because you are unqualified: on a whim, with objective standards removed, you can now self-righteously put the blame on those close to you, or on the unfair system, or even on the big wide (and deeply flawed) world.
Before you know it, your moral impulses are reduced to the tantrum of a toddler who breaks things and hits a babysitter; a teenager who curses at his family and blames the universe for his pimples; a graduating student of Marxism at the Occupy Wall Street encampment who vandalizes private property and blames capitalism for not providing him with a high-income job; an aging member of the “drug revolution” who blames The Man and The System for his depression; or the president of the United States who blames corporations and bank CEOs, modern technology and “messy democracy,” Fox News and all other media, the Japanese tsunami and the Arab Spring, as well as Bush, Reagan, Congress, the GOP, and the entire city of Washington for his lack of achievement.
Coincidentally, such is also the moral foundation of collectivist societies, from Cargo Cult followers to the so-called People’s Democracies. In the erstwhile USSR, the government redistributed not only the nation’s dwindling wealth; it redistributed successes and failures. All achievements were credited to the Party and its leaders, as well as to a centrally appointed regiment of “Heroes of Socialist Labor” who conspicuously “sacrificed for the common good.” The failures were blamed on foreign aggressors, Western imperialism, enemies of the people, kulaks, saboteurs, corrupt bureaucracy, irresponsible middle management, selfish greed, and lack of proletariat consciousness, as well as on natural disasters and bad weather. Sound familiar?
Find the guilty, and the opportunistic politicians will come. The problem is, they come not to help you but to help themselves. The latest example is the current grievance-mongering U.S. government — a massive self-serving army of patented demagogues who have yet to improve one life or right a single wrong. In the final analysis, collectivism is a dead end. Releasing the floodgates of government corruption is only Act One in the drama of a declining nation.
Now that we have gotten to the bottom of it, let’s review Obama’s quote from this new perspective:
If you have failed, somebody along the line ruined it for you. There was a lousy teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unfair American system that caused you to fail. Somebody benefitted from your demise. If you’re a loser, it’s not your fault. Somebody else made that happen. The Titanic didn’t sink on its own. Corporations and insurance companies made a lot of money off of it, so they must be complicit. The point is, when we fail, we fail not only because of our individual shortcomings, but also because others have teamed up behind your backs. Vote for me — I’ll punish the guilty and give you what’s rightfully yours.
It turns out that “someone else made that happen” is merely a flip-side of “blame someone else.” One can’t exist without the other.
In contrast, the argument for individualism and competitive private enterprise cannot be “flipped,” not without distorting its nature and moral purpose. The statement “It’s my achievement and I have the right to what I earn” manifests only positive, objectively true human values.
Unlike its alternatives, capitalism doesn’t grow out of a dark, indiscernible mass of moral entanglements. And unlike crony capitalism — a corrupt monster created by government intrusion into the economy — free market capitalism is transparent. Just like the greatest invention of our time, the personal computer (brought to us by free enterprise), capitalism has a user-friendly interface: what you see is what you get.
Well said.
Sure: “It’s mine! Nobody else can have any!!!” Is a universal human ‘value’ but, fortunately, very rare among humans over the age of two. Sorry, Mr. Individual, but you were born into the wrong species. Homo sapiens is a social animal. And the Enlightenment, Lysenko, and Harry Browne, Jr. were wrong — man is born with a large stock of instincts, inclinations, and innate responses (Human Nature, it’s called), which preclude living together like infants.
Thank you for laying bare the underlying commonalities that unite primitive religious authoritarianism with modern Leftist totalitarianism.
And speak for yourself, buster.
“Man is a being of self-made soul.”
Whereas yours is the more “sophisticated” philosophy of the schoolyard bully,”Gimme your lunch money,punk!”
Not THIS playground,bub.
“It’s mine! Nobody else can have any” translates to “I don’t have anything therefore I can take all I want.”
Your childish perspective is that of collectivism and justification for flash mobs who loot stores, stealing from people.
For the collective hive: this is stealing from all of us since no taxes will be paid on those transactions.
Somebody has more than me so I can take it (although you are unable to prove they have more) or Somebody has more and should pay their Fair Share (although you are unable to show they have more and are unable to state what is Fair Share).
“I failed out of high school but its someone else fault” Certainly less painful to blame someone else.
The true perspective is
“Somebody was successful, I should try that”.
“I did not finish high school; I can only get high school level jobs and can’t feed my family. I am studying at night to get a GED.”
Just as the author was brilliantly explaining to you, since the progressive thrive on you following shared responsibility, no one will attend GED classes, graduate from high schools, try to get the skills to get a real job. No gov agency will meet measurements and guidelines, budget requirements and laws. Equally, this explains the failure of every single Obama program.
Jacobite, it is you who are of the wrong species. Entomologist E.O. Wilson commented on Marxism, “Great theory, wrong species.” Collectivism works great for insects like ants and bees, not so much for any species with a brain that has developed beyond insect level.
I suppose in your Government Indoctrination Center, they did not teach the history of the Soviet Union. They had the system you seem to want. They failed, and failed spectacularly. The Soviet Union could not feed their own people. The Soviet Union could not produce enough for the comfort and well being of their own people. When people have to stand in blocks long lines to purchase toilet paper or bread or toothpaste (when such products are even available), there is something wrong with that system.
When entrepreneurs work in their own self-interest, Adam Smith’s (not the douche bag in Tucson) “invisible hand” benefits most everyone around. When a producer gets to benefit from his/her ideas, risks, hard work, there is enough produced so everyone can benefit. When someone else sees the entrepreneur benefit from their own hard work, that encourages others to aim high and take risks, and again everyone benefits. But, when we see the entrepreneur get penalized and vilified, that discourages anyone from taking risks or developing new ideas, or even bothering with trying. And, when we see a lazy, incompetent slacker get as much or more than someone who works, then you get a lot of unemployment. After all, why bust a hump, when what you earn is confiscated from you and “redistributed” to someone who won’t even try?
Please search me by the keyword “math”. I have lived 18 years in the only Communist Muslim country in the world (Albania) and have a particular insight of what’s going on. I am the Math guy Oleg cites, and am much more interested at publicizing my insight than my name.
Astounded! Since I became aware of “Marxism”, particularly in its Soviet and Soviet-block form, in 1960′s, I have had the experience that ex-Marxists of whatever stripe seem to be capable of insight and an ability to formulate said insight, that I, with all the pomposity of my exalted titles (I live in Germany where the populace still believes that said titles are “medals of honor”), simply am not able to realize, despite writing books on the matter. Burnham, Hook, Gen. Pacepa and now Mr. Abashian (I do not mean to imply any membership in the Party, only acquaintance with it). The article to which my comment is directed is a rarity in clarity. The logic of “collectivity” has been so forcefully presented in just so few words. I offer my thanks and admiration. I do not know if my title might lend prestige to the evaluation now being given in the eyes of others, it does so in mine (Germanized as they are).
Aside: Hitler clearly represented collectivity logic (though he had his own Nazi vocabulary for it) and remained true to said logic in the end. What is meant?
When it was clear that the “Herrenrasse” was losing the war, Hitler turned on said collectivity consigning it to a justified elimination. In short, the same logic that he claimed for the superiority of the Germanic race did, willy/nilly, lead him to condemn said race in the moment of its evident inferiority. For the sake of post-WW II Germans its good that Speer did not carry out Hitler’s order of scorched earth against Germany. Yet such a policy was collectively pure logic.
Note of humor: My first visit to the Soviet Union->Russia was in 1991 in Leningrad->St. Petersburg. I am using the double references because transition was in the air. In St. P. I walked with my host past the Communist Party headquarters. Up front was a 2 meter high bust of Lenin. I srambled to the top and sat on Lenin’s head. I thereupon opened a can of American Coke and loudly proposed a toast to Lenin’s demise. Coke beats Communism! However, as some unfriendly piercing eyes (from within some bushes) began spewing, let us say, discontent, my host hurried me away. So, here is one to you, Lennie!
Try that on the Lenin statue in Seattle. The local faithful will call the cops. However, if you look at it closely, you can see the signs of urine corroding the bronze.
Years ago I studied at the Uni. of Washington. I do not remember a Lenin statue, though had I known of one, such knowledge might have provoked corrosive ideas in me. I also planned to repeat my toast to Lenin in his tomb in the Red Square. My Russian host did warn me of unpleasantries from the Militia or police. Once I saw some of the burly police walking about, I decided that a toast was internationally improper (for my health). But the idea showed good intents on my part and I am sure that the Lord, assuming no HHS Mandate to the contrary, with reward me one eon. On a serious matter, however, compared with the ongoing German tv treatment of the Hitler period, I have experienced only tentative moves in Russian tv to not forget Stalen & Co.
Please do me the favor to read my comments somewhere below. Search me by the keyword “math”. I have lived 18 years in the only Communist Muslim country in the world (Albania) and have a particular insight of what’s going on. I am the Math guy Oleg cites, and am much more interested at publicizing my insight than my name.
When you think of it, Marxism is a secular religion. Its followers believe in the Apocalypse, and work hard to bring it in. Then everybody will live happy ever after.
Mullahs in Iran believe in the second coming of Mahdi (and work hard to bring in the nuclear Apocalypse as a prerequisite), Marxists believe in the second coming of Comintern.
I walked with my host past the Communist Party headquarters. Up front was a 2 meter high bust of Lenin. I srambled to the top and sat on Lenin’s head. I thereupon opened a can of American Coke and loudly proposed a toast to Lenin’s demise. Coke beats Communism!
I am proud to say that I went you one better. The same year you were in Leningrad/St. Petersburg, I was in Berlin. I had just spend a few hours in the “House at Checkpoint Charlie”, the museum made to showcase the various escapes and escape attempts involving East Germans trying to flee to the West. After leaving the museum, I realized that I had an urgent need to urinate and noticed an absence of public facilities to serve that need. I walked around a bit and soon found a surviving portion of the Berlin Wall. It was with great relief – and pleasure – that I relieved myself on that hideous monstrosity. I didn’t notice anyone else around and there were absolutely no threats or sanctions applied to me for my act of urination. While it would have been more satisfying yet to be able to urinate on the living breathing Erich Honnecker, Stalin, Lenin or Karl Marx, I felt this was the symbolic equivalent.
There is always an upstart that outdoes me. I cannot imagine what would have happened, in easy view ot th Party headquarters, if I had duplicated your eliminatory dedication to the “Mauer” on Lenin’s cement head (as fascinating as said idea sounds), except that my Russian host would have fainted for fear. Those piercing eyes were not friendly.
Please do me the favor to read my comments somewhere below. Search me by the keyword “math”. I have lived 18 years in the only Communist Muslim country in the world (Albania) and have a particular insight of what’s going on. I am the Math guy Oleg cites, and am much more interested at publicizing my insight than my name.
I hope you like my take on Marxism, Obamaism and other stuff, Prof. Leonard W.
I consider Marxism a reactionary idea that belongs in the nineteenth century, no matter what those reactionary liberals have themselves believe.
A former student of mine said it best, “Obama’s ideas are just not right for this time and this country, not to mention his crappy foreign policy.”
“Against individualism, the Fascist conception is for the State. Liberalism (this would be “classic liberalism” like that of Thomas Jefferson and Barry Goldwater) denied the State in the interests of the particular individual; Fascism reaffirms the State as the true reality of the individual.”
“Against individualism, the fascist conception is for the State; and it is for the individual in so far as he coincides with the State, which is the conscience and universal will of man.”
“Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State.”
“The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State — a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values — interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.”
The above are the words of Benito Mussolini and I can see no significant difference, because there are none, between his words and those of Barack ‘You didn’t build that’ Obama. If Benito Mussolini was a fascist, and he was, so is Barack Obama.
We are in scary times indeed! What has happened over the last 100 years to our country is a well planned coup by the Progressives. They have been very tactful and patient. Our elected officials have sold themselves to the global elites to ensure they have a lifeboat for themselves when the entire fiat currency system crashes.
Rulers Law will be enforced and our freedom will be usurped by those who created the collapse. Crazy? Hope so!
A hearty thanks FeralCat for the Mussolini quote. I had heard it before some years ago and didn’t have the foresight to copy it down.
This will be useful copy indeed.
Govt did not create the Internet, but did create foundation for it. I worked with some of these people in the 70′s-80′s at SRI, UCLA and UC Berkeley, Darpa, and other institutions. We had our own networks within Defense R&D community in California, exchanging email, programs and and other internet applications in early 1980′s. Credit given where it is due;
http://www.internetsociety.org/internet/internet-51/history-internet/brief-history-internet/#LGR67
According to the GAO; During the years 2007-2010, the Federal Reserve moved 3+ Trillion to European banks without collateral or method of repayment. This event was completed with willful ignorance by Bush and Obama administrations, the greatest redistribution of wealth in U. S. History.
The only difference between the Republicans and Democrats today is cultural Marxism on the left or corporate Fascism on the right. Take your pick, either way the USA has committed itself to slowly spiral downwards and leave the pages of History with a whimper.
“The only difference between the Republicans and Democrats today is cultural Marxism on the left or corporate Fascism on the right. Take your pick, either way the USA has committed itself to slowly spiral downwards and leave the pages of History with a whimper.”
I’d go a little easy on the sauce. The Republicans have at least some appreciation for individualism and the free market. For Progressives, the height of individualism is the power to screw around and kill your baby to escape responsibility.
There is no small government movement on the Democrat side. Their mirror image of the TEA Party – OWS – wants more collectivism and bigger government. Not less.
He’s more right than you are, Amos. Blind loyalty to the Republican Party isn’t going to help America any.
Wake up and smell the coffee. The Republican Establishment is no more a friend of liberty than the Leftist Establishment. They are two sides of the same coin.
Yes, there are still plenty of good Republicans out there, but they aren’t running the show.
Why do you think we’ve been getting nothing but a string of idiots (at best) as Presidential candidates?
Reagan blindsided them, and they don’t intend to make that mistake again.
G.W. Bush nearly did the same, but they made sure he was surrounded and controlled by his Daddy’s advisors, and they kept him from getting too far out of line.
Where did Amos express unreserved support for the GOP in his comment? He didn’t and your response is an exercise in reductio ad absurdum.
While there is evidence of corporate fascism in the US, its adherents are commonly amongst the ranks of conservatives. Fascism is fascism regardless of whether its symptoms are expressed in business or government. The last time I checked, Obama’s relationships with healthcare companies, GE, and GM are the best examples of corporate fascism and its supporters in the GOP and in the Tea Party are very few and declining.
Edit to previous comment: I left out the word “not” in the sentence “..its adherents are commonly amongst the ranks of conservatives.”
Mea culpa.
“Corporate Fascism”? Because business is authoritarian in structure it is therefor to be identified with Mussolini? The term “fascist” is a coinage derived strictly from Mussoliini’s regime, emulating Hitler’s National Socialism. Implicit in it is rigid military enforcement. You seem to be attempting to present yourself as unbiased, but the application of a term identified with socialist thuggery reveals a quite different mind-set.
You’re right about the “rigid” part, but actually, you’ve got the rest of it a bit reversed.
Italian Fascism and Mussolini came first. Mussolini came to power in Italy in 1921, about two years before Hitler went to Landsburg Prison for his attempted takeover of the Bavarian government in the failed “Beer Hall putsch”.
The word “Fascist”, BTW, was derived from the fasces, a bundle of birch rods bound with a red leather strip, holding an axe blade. It was used as a symbol of legal authority by Roman magistrates, and eventually became more-or-less the Roman “national standard”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces
Fascism was fundamentally an Italian invention, an attempt to revive the Roman Empire. Similarly, in Germany it became an attempt to revive the empires of Frederick the Great and Bismarck, hence the term “Third Reich” (those two were the first two Deutsches Reichs).
Both movements were fundamentally socialist, but not internationalist, unlike the brand of socialism promulgated by the Soviet Union. Both the Italian and German “Workers’ Parties” began as more-or-less doctrinaire collectivist Marxist groups, but quickly became nationalist and anti-Communist, not out of any doctrinal differences but from a simple rejection of being ruled from Moscow. Gregor Strasser, the Nazi Party’s general secretary before Hitler became chancellor in 1933, was from a northern German faction which advocated a more “volkisch” brand of socialism and stronger ties with the USSR to further a “people’s revolution” worldwide. (He was murdered during the “Night of the Long Knives” purge, 30 June-1 July 1934.)
The differences between Fascism and Communism are much smaller than most people realize, or most “experts” want to admit.
clear ether
eon
Quite true. I suspect most people aren’t aware that before 1941, Hitler greatly admired Stalin and his ability to make things happen; and that Himmler modeled much of the Gestapo on the Soviet secret police model.
The MSM jape that Fascism is a “right wing conspiracy” was first formulated by Stalin in 1942 in and effort to get more support from the West against his fellow traveler Hitler.
It has been a familiar bromide for use against the conservative wing of the GOP since about the time of Goldwater.
Government control actually moves along a continuum from right to left. On the right is no government, or anarchy. As it moves left, government becomes more and more controlling, until it gets to the very far left, where communism and fascism reside.
http://pjmedia.com/blog/you-didnt-build-that-and-the-darkness-of-collective-punishment/3/?replytocom=3225719#respond
Sorry. Wrong link. Here’s the correct link:
http://www.wimp.com/thegovernment/
I think the single most chilling remark I’ve ever read was one that Stalin made to his daughter AFTER the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. According to her, he said “You know, it’s too bad Hitler had to go and invade us. Together, we could really have done some things!”
So much for the notion that they were fundamentally incapable of working together….
I shudder to imagine the world that would have arisen if Hitler had delayed his invasion and worked with Stalin on some massive “joint project”. Which countries would they have overcome together? Who would have been left standing before the two finally came to blows?
You are correct but only in the US. In Europe, the left/right axis is between communism and fascism with tyrrany at either end. That’s why the left loves to accuse the right in this country of being a bunch of Nazi fascists. They’re using the European power axis of left/right rather than the proper American one you describe.
The differences between Socialism, Fascism, and Communism are are mere window dressing.
At their core, they are exactly the same thing.
Now that I’m older, I don’t believe for an instant that the mostly incorrect explanation, that Communism = Ultra Left and Fascism = Ultra Right, that was taught in my public school education was anything other than liberal brain washing.
We were too naive both in age and as a society to realize that the academics were already brainwashing us. More correct metrics for comparing governments might be individuality vs collectivism, or libertarianism vs regulation, or centralization vs localization, etc. I think they used the right vs left because right was also considered conservative and left was also liberal. And the desire was to cast fear on rightwing conservatives. By defining in terms of right and left, they could argue that too far right was as dangerous as too far left.
Using more correct descriptors, it becomes apparent that Communism and Fascism are pretty close to each other in terms of individual and state powers and far away from Republican Democracy. Like today, IMO Obama’s politics are more Fascist than Communist and certainly not Democratic. However people look at you funny when you call him a Fascist because they all know that Fascists are rightwingers.
I suspect that those who were in charge, the “Movers and Shakers” of the 1960s (E.g. my parents, Depression-Era kids turned WWII Vets, turned Cold Warriors) just couldn’t quite wrap their heads around just how venal, manipulative, well, Socialist their children had become. Angry, yes. Different, loud, aggressive music, yes. Didn’t want to fight in Viet Nam, OK. But being secret “Fellow Travelers” of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Josep Vissionarivich Vissionarivich? Hardly. We raised them better and smarter than that!
It occurred right under their – and our – noses, until here we are.
I am the kid brother of three 60s radical types (well, one is a Viet Nam Vet, so he gets a free pass in my book). But that I have spent a lifetime having the landscape around me perverted from what I knew as a kid, a young man, into this sickening wasteland, all at the direction, the desire, of my older sibling’s generation. They have their cause, their vision, and screw the rest of us.
I marvel at this. How we got to the point where Socialism, Communism, Totalitarianism, are openly expressed by my politicians, business leaders, media stars. Blatantly. Openly. Arrogantly. With disdain for the ruck, imperial proclamations and all.
We need a really good Frakking house-cleaning, we do.
This is actually a comment on allston’s reply to your comment but there is no reply link on allston’s remark.
Stalin’s birth name was not “Josep Vissionarivich Vissionarivich?”; it was Josep Vissarionovich Djugashvilli. Sorry to be pedantic
The reason I shirk the “fascist” label for Omicron (a.k.a BHO) is because of the nationalistic nature of Fascism. O is clearly,in my eyes, a proponent of globalist European style socialism. This is evidenced,to me, for his support of U.N. incursions like L.O.S.T.,his frequent apologies to America’s enemies and so forth. It’s clear that among his rank and file, the idea that the American way of life and especially the American people, are in any way special or superior, would go over about as well as admitting that you eat dogs would go over around non-Obamaites. In other words, the idea of national exceptionalism,supported by both Hitler and Mussolini, is considered a sin on par with bestiality to Obama. On the the other hand, the ideas of Marx and Lenin, that all people are the same and that there are no non-socially created differences between say,blacks and whites,men and women, or rich and poor, can be supported by numerous examples using Obama’s own words, “You didn’t build that.” being only ONE example out of many. Under this system of belief, there is no reason not to unite two peoples,such as America and Mexico for instance, other than “xenophobia” and/or “racism” because their cultural differences are arbitrarily and superficially created,neither is superior,and both can be arbitrarily and superficially redesigned to be whatever an all-powerful state wants them to be.
This is my take, at least.
Socialism is “left wing” in that it emphasizes radical change for local and international society.
Fascism is “right wing” in that it embraces the traditional “conservative” and “right wing” ideal of nationalism.
The type of nationalism espoused by Hitler and Mussolini was very similar to the type of nationalism espoused by monarchists and royalists throughout Europe. As a result, despite the obvious socialist (and therefore “left wing”) aspects of fascism, it attracted mostly those on the “right” monarchists and former military.
I applaud your erudition. You might also have pointed out to the uneducated that our nation has a long association with the fasces, depicted as an icon for ” e pluribus unum”, ( In union there is strength) on our coinage and heraldry. Are we therefor a fascist nation? I chose not to go into along explication of the etymology to make the brief point that the use of the word “fascism” to define a form of governance is of recent origin, explicit to militant socialism and that cojoining it with corporate management is offensively inappropriate
Some of the arguments about fascism/national socialism and communism treates more the symptoms than the underlying structure. Please seek out James Burnham’s “The Managerial Revolution”. Burnham, #2 in the Trotsky movement, broke with the man to be with an axe in the head Trotsky regarding Trotsky’s superfical thesis that, despite Stalin, the Soviet Union was the homeland of the proletariat. With some development in theory, Burnham published (I believe around 1940) the book mentioned above in which he showed morphological similarities in socio-economic organization between National Socialism (which would include Fascism), the Soviet Union and FDR’s New Deal. The catch phrase is “MANAGERIAL revolution”. If one can grasp what is meant with “managerial”, update it a bit, and one has the “managerial” structure of the new species-New Deal of Obama-ism.
Once the similar morphologies are understood, then the specifics can be examined and criticized. Yes, Mussolini Fascism was before Hitler and was a model for that National SOCIALIST. Later Hitler became the driving force and Benito began his slide into the dust bin of history. The back and forth of the comments before this one from me have interested me and been informative. I am only suggesting, to borrow a term from linquistics, a “GERATIVE deep structure” that maniffests itselt in various forms of collectivism.
Mr. Abatshian has with few words cought the central principle of collectivism evident to him under Soviet rule. The Soviets are gone (though the neo-Soviet Putin is there), but the collective temptation remains. I appreciate greatly the message of the article. It incapsules said collectivism.
Sorry Stuart, but “e pluribus unum” means “out of many, one.” It refers to the union of the thirteen independent states in a single national government (which preserves all non-delegated powers in the states), and the fact that any person of any religion from any country in the world can become a member of our national community by adopting as their own the governing principles embodied in the Constitution (and by extension it’s antecedent, the Declaration of Independence), with their embodiment of the principles of individual rights (and obligations) and limited government. That is not only the opposite of the collectivist fascist ideal, which recognizes no limits in principle on the power of the state and conceives of the “people” comprising the nation as an organic, extended kinship group.
By the way, I once lived in the USSR and I noticed lots of bridges, roads and public schools but no entrepreneurship. It was Obama’s dream come true: there was no individual achievement of any kind that I could see. Alas, not much achievement of any kind, and not much that wasn’t imitated or stolen from countries with individualist, free-enterprise traditions. But I did have a friend who tried to emigrate to the US (he had married a US tourist), but whose request was denied because of the state’s “investment” in his education. Chalk up one achievement for big government.
More Moral Relativism DRIVEL from the stain-on-Libertairanism PaulCamp Followers.
NO DIFFERENCE?!?
PHHHHHHHHHHHHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Internet had many fathers. Anyone who wanted to could develop stuff off the public domain platform of the ARPAnet (Army Research Projects Agency in Huntsville, Alabama).
Anyone who had a pinky finger in some project related to free usage of the original platform claims, like Al Gore, to be the “inventor” of the Internet because, each working in their own university closed universe, hadn’t a clue how multifaceted and hydra-headed its dendrites gradually became.
If you want to call the Army “the Government”, then OK, “the Government” invented ARPAnet — but NOT the Internet which is the aggregate of all the expanded usages of the original platform.
It is telling that the original purpose of ARPAnet was to control and slap down currupt academics who were playing roll-over games with Defense Department research grants — in other words, an accounting tool to bring order to chaotic academia. The purpose was not anything like the Internet.
If infrastructure of our commons, like roads and such, were developed by “the Government” for businesses to profit by, they wouldn’t be used. But our networks of roads and sidewalks and water pipes grew organically from specific needs of each user. Not by collective central planning.
All of which sidesteps the most important question: would it have happened anyway if the DoD hadn’t provided the first demand? It’s idiotic to think that we’d still be dialing into mainframes in 2012 over telephone lines with teletype machines had the government never been involved. That implication is absurd.
“It’s idiotic to think that we’d still be dialing into mainframes in 2012 over telephone lines with teletype machines had the government never been involved. That implication is absurd.”
If you asked them, I’m sure the government would take credit for having invented the computer too. There’s even some truth to that since they were surely involved in the purchase of primitive computers at Bletchley Park for instance; that money could be said to have helped finance the development of computers I suppose.
If you then accept that the government played a role in inventing the computer AND the internet and further assumed that neither would exist WITHOUT the involvement of the government, we’d be back to using telephones – or maybe smoke signals – to communicate data. (I can imagine someone somewhere finding some element of government support for Edison as he created and improved his inventions. They’d argue that the US Military ensured that his lab wouldn’t be invaded by foreigners as he worked on things.)
I will give you a current example. My spouse working for a private company with no gov funding developed a new superconducting material that draws heat away from anything. A very cheap one inch cube can replace the and reduce that weight. It replaces the coils on any refrigerator. While thin sheet carbon heat dispersers allowed for the development of flat screen tvs and ipads,this would take it a step further.
However, during the thousands of tests they ran, one material test was run at a government facility with super cold test capability. The gov has tied up the material and its patent for the next twenty years. It will never go to market. EVER. Just because they ran one test out of thousands at a gov facility.
We ran tests using it to super cool a hydrogen and solar race car entered in a national contest. While everyone else overheated, the one with the material didn’t.
It would be good to have a link to this revelation about transferring the wealth to Europe.
Also, the concept “corporate fascism” seems to be a contradiction in terms, because fascism is a totalitarian ideology based on primacy of state over all other interests. Unless you happen to be a follower of Chomsky (which is the same as communist), and believe that “corporate” is just a bad word, and “corporate fascism” means just “something very bad”.
“Corporations”, as Mussolini understood the word, referred to collective groups defined by industry and other economic criteria, analogous to Marx’s classes. In addition to worker groups (e.g. Miners, woodsmen), industrialists were also expected to form associations. These “corporations” were analogous to what were commonly called “guilds”, and so the term “guild socialism” was often applied to this system.
Of course, guilds are what modern Americans recognize as *unions*. So “corporatism” as Mussolini meant it essentially, means “rule by unions”.
So, do you think Alex meant to say that Republicans stand for “rule by unions”? I guess, we will never know it for sure.
I have written extensively about how Obama’s so-called ed reforms mandate and then require tracking of each students actions demonstrating daily recognition of their responsibilities to others. The cultivation of a sense of we-ness instead of individuality. In fact the Common Core has expressly rejected any emphasis on individual thinking as opposed to cultivating an obligation to the amorphous “common good.” http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/does-common-core-target-hearts-and-minds-to-sway-future-voters/ is just one of the many posts on using education to create a personality that will tolerate political manipulation. Indeed, welcome it as necessary to end injustice and inequity in the world.
It sounds like hyperbole to say we are adopting education practices fit for totalitarianism. Except that is literally where these theories and practices came from. Lenin imported John Dewey to aid his target of Russian hearts and minds during the Russian Civil War. This DoED and the regional accreditors and the professional associations are all mandating Dewey’s practices and theories now. Topped with psychological practices the Soviets created to use education to foster that malleable, collectivist personality.
Using education, the State has declared war on its people to change their behaviors, the noetic system, the economy, and society itself. It is only our sense of traditions and the glorious past and our belief it cannot happen in a country that still holds elections, that prevents our seeing that we are already dealing with totalitarinism. Except this time they hope to use education to stealthily create mindsets that will make gulags unnecessary.
You are right on! The one thing that people working for Romney and Scott Brown need to do is turn this around. Chief E. Warren said “lets get back to work” on the premise that building road and bridge infastructure is the key to turning the middle class around. I ask this one question: why is it okay for Warren and people like her get to have luxury job in the Whitehouse while we the tax payers have to work on the roads? That is what Scott Brown needs to counter to her new ad. He needs to ask “do you want to have the freedom to work wherever you want, or do you want to be relegated to working where the government sais you can?; ei the roads & bridges. I think this is totally missed in the media about what Obama and Warren have said. Do we really want the government issuing out work orders to the general public???
One of the obvious responses to the Warren/Obama/collectivist meme, which I have not yet seen anywhere articulated is this:
One of the most significant parts of what “we” – that is the Founders and the aggregated people of the United States – created is a system in which economic and political freedom are paramount, and which specifically limited the government’s ability to confiscate the fruits of individual labor. Without that freedom to keep what one makes, the infrastructure which has been built by both public and private initiative would never have been built, and the technological and theoretical innovations on which this infrastructure rests would not have occurred.
Your mathematician friend is correct: appeals to the collective role in individual achievement are always a prelude to looting.
GOD BLESS YOU, OLEG! I highly recommend your book “Shakedown Socialism” to all.
Think about E. Warren’s and Obama’s “You didn’t build that” narrative and you have the pro-union speech. The car company that you financed, created, and sweated over actually belongs to the workers – you didn’t build it. The airline company that flies billions in planes doesn’t belong to the investors, it belongs to the machine operators – you didn’t build it. Your government doesn’t belong to the taxpayers, it belongs to the employees – you didn’t build it.
“You didn’t build that” continues to resonate with Democrats because it is the standard union speech they’ve heard and spoken for decades. The business belongs to the employees and exists only to serve them. You didn’t build that.
That’s an interesting parallel. The Union line is that workers owe everything to the Union. Sure, you may do the actual work, sweat the actual sweat. But without the Union, you’d be doing it for lousy pay in dangerous conditions for people who think of you as a slave and try to cheat you all the time. That’s why you owe the Union your money, your time, and your loyalty. If you don’t pay this debt, you are the infamous “free-rider,” getting something for nothing, benefitting from the contributions of others without contributing yourself.
Evidently, Obama has precisely the same attitude towards Government and the citizenry. If you succeed, you owe the Government. If you don’t pay up (pay extra, in fact), you are a free-rider. In Obama’s world, rich people and business owners are all free-riders. It’s weird.
Totalitarians are not generally satisfied with merely possesing the contents of the masses’ wallets. That exercise is often a prelude to a quest for a much greater prize:
The individual’s thoughts, beliefs, imagination, emotions, in a word, his very soul, is what’s at stake here. Some of the roads that lead to this inner sanctum are envy, hatred, confusion, but above all, fear. We must not let these things dominate our hearts and minds.
The individual’s thoughts, beliefs, imagination, emotions, in a word, his very soul, is what’s at stake here.
Exactly so. Joseph Skvorecky, a Czech who fled from his home country to Canada after the Soviet invasion of 1968, wrote a book called The Engineer of Human Souls in 1977 (and many others besides). Here is what he said on the Acknowledgements page of his book by way of explanation of his title: “The expression ‘engineer of human souls’ is held by many political indoctrinators, to be Stalin’s definition of the writer; as an engineer constructs a machine, so must a writer construct the mind of the New Man.”
Henry Reardon:
Thank you for your comment.
Notice the irony lurking in all of this: these totalitarians deny God exists, and that human beings have souls. Yet, everything they do aims at taking control of the soul itself.
They want to posses what they say doesn’t exist. It’s a mandacious, upside down thinking.
I think that’s the only kind of thinking of which they are capable. I really do.
Only in a PC society with a lefty MSM could it have been possible for a marxists, socialists, with terrorists friends & shady associations to become president. So we did it in the name of redeeming our racist past and begging all victims for forgiveness!
Now that we are over this crap perhaps we could get back to electing an American to be our President while at the same timing giving a good thrashing for the mendacious and out of control MSM. They surely deserve to be put out of business and from the ratings of the networks and bankruptcy potential of most of their liberal rag newspapers, they are well on their way.
Obama always was an empty suit and the ultimate manchurian candidate. Who the hell really knows who this guy is. To have participated iin this hoax will go downn in history as a deeply corrupt plot by the liberals to take over our government and institute policies designed to corrupt and make dependent our entire population.
The game is over now and a reawakening is happening and the scum bag rats will be jumping ship soon. I cannot wait.
“…or the president of the United States who blames corporations and bank CEOs, modern technology and “messy democracy,” Fox News and all other media, the Japanese tsunami and the Arab Spring, as well as Bush, Reagan, Congress, the GOP, and the entire city of Washington for his lack of achievement.”
For four painful years now I’ve neard nothing from Obama except excuses. Literally everything is to blame EXCEPT his own ineptness. And his focus on the collective is simply chilling. Ayn Rand is probably rolling over in her grave right now. And Obama’s biggest problem is that he cannot run on his record. In fact, he talks about everything else EXCEPT his own record. Even his signature bill, Obamacare, isn’t talked about, or even mentioned, by the president. Ever. Now that the Supreme Court has stated that Obamacare is a tax, it’s the biggest tax increase in American history, bar none, and you have a far-left liberal Democrat to thank for it. If this mess remains on the books, we will be paying for it for generations to come. And, to this day, Americans STILL don’t know what’s in the bill and what it means to them. All they do know is that it’s going to cost A LOT of money.
If these are reasons NOT to vote for Obama in November, I don’t know what is. Americans are not stupid. “The dog ate my homework” only works for so long before the teacher gives you a failing grade. Time to give Obama an “F” and move on to someone new.
Well hope all the OBAMA voters in 2008 that supported this Maroon can NOW Clearly see he has no concept of being an American – he is a Spoiled Private school Dumped kid at age 8 & ignored by getto daddy – Commie Grand parents and commie leaders like Wright he looked up to- he is one confused 1/2 white idiot- BUT he did break 100 games of golf & probably a record for most games of any president
What hasn’t been said is that part of the root of Obama’s statement, “You didn’t build that” is founded in the fact (and his recognition of) he was given everything. Me, a guy from a middle-class family, who’s white, had no chance to get to Harvard, or Columbia for that matter, except on the merits of my own hard work and transcripts from my academic achievements, as well as activity in sports, or clubs or other non-academic environs. Most schools call it the “whole-person” concept.
But for a guy who had no remarkableness about him, he seems to have been rocketed to stardom. This in itself is a recipe for disaster. Basing all your hopes on “what he’s gonna do” is a fool’s errand. It was also magnified by his being given the Nobel Peace Prize on the come.
He has not contributed anything. He has never earned anything. He has not accomplished anything prior to his being elected president. Therefore, he is convinced he is somehow superior and it’s his rightful given to be at the top.
But now he DOES have a record and it’s all bad. And, what do Americans do when they don’t like the show they’ve been watching? They change the channel.
We were told he’s articulate.
We were told he’s brilliant.
We were told he’s post-racial.
A leader.
A uniter.
He’s none of those things. I knew this before he ever got elected. Many who read this blog knew it as well. Actually, he reminds me of a young enlisted guy who used to work under my command who had a story for everything and who thought his transparent games were so very clever. A liar and a cheat as well. I got rid of him.
I still hold out that someday, this piece of plastic president will be left to obscurity.
Thank you, author Atbashian. Every once in a while I have an opportunity to read something so thought provoking that I find myself pushed back from the monitor and simply taking time to reflect on what I have just read. This is one of those times. My thoughts now center on my unending amazement that in my lifetime we have arrived at a point in the American experience that learned individuals are discussing the reality that we have allowed ourselves to come under the authority of Fascist leaders. No “kind of” or “sort of” or “leaning toward” but directly identifiable Fascists plain and simple. Sadly only a very few of us know of this reality and that few does not include those who could actually do something about it. I wonder if John Boehner, or anyone of similar influence, has ever read anything like this and then pushed back and reflected upon the words and their implication? For feckless John probably the same day that Nancy Pelosi hands him a copy and says “here Johnny, read this”.
Collectivism is an idea so discredited by history that only an academic could embrace it. Barack Obama is a product of the academy as are most of his closest associates and advisers. As to why and how this state of affairs came about, I defer to Yuri Bezmenov. His exegesis always chills me to the bone.
On a side note, I made a trip the other day into New Mexico’s rural environs in search of a fishing hole. Lo and behold, in the middle of nowhere, I discovered a public housing project. It’s barrack-like accommodations had long since been abandoned and the place was surrounded by barbed wire. A collectivist dream if ever there was one. Dogs and guard towers sold separately.
Academics live in a very strange world. I’ve known this academically for a long time, now, but I got my nose rubbed in it just recently when I encountered a discussion forum for academics, wherein a bunch of folks were discussing job hunting.
It’s a mundane sort of topics. Everybody does job hunting at some time or another, and I had thought it all looked pretty much the same regardless of profession.
Not with these people.
It was really bizarre to see how VERY different their entire world is.
Collectivism provides us with a sufficiently analgesic illusion of fairness…with objective standards removed, you can now self-righteously put the blame on those close to you, or on the unfair system, or even on the big wide (and deeply flawed) world…the president of the United States who blames corporations and bank CEOs, modern technology and “messy democracy,” Fox News and all other media, the Japanese tsunami and the Arab Spring, as well as Bush, Reagan, Congress, the GOP, and the entire city of Washington for his lack of achievement.
You have really nailed it.
And the kicker is that most power mongering collectivists don’t even believe this garbage.
…failures were blamed on foreign aggressors, Western imperialism, enemies of the people, kulaks, saboteurs, corrupt bureaucracy, irresponsible middle management, selfish greed, and lack of proletariat consciousness, as well as on natural disasters and bad weather. Sound familiar?
Very familiar.
Thank you Oleg! Extremely well stated.
Don’t forget the “rootless cosmopolitans”. They seem to show up on every blame list.
Great piece, writer of said piece. Not to mention Mr. Atbashian’s book, website are excellent as well!
The thing about collectivism is that, not only does it open the way for looting by opportunistic politicians and bureaucrats, it opens the way for looting by the workers themselves (witness proclamations from leaders of the OWS movement who proclaimed that workers had not just the right, but the duty to steal from their employers to “stick it to The Man”). P.J. O’Rourke, in his book, “Eat the Rich”, wrote about the astonishing amount of on-the-job theft in the Soviet Union. He wrote that, in 1990, the USSR Academy of Sciences reported that losses of the “objects of labor” (finished products) totalled approximately 70 percent (!) and losses of the “means of labor” (tools, parts and raw materials) totalled between 40 and 50 percent! “On-the-job” theft was institutionalized in the USSR, from the managerial class on down to the lowliest workers on the line and in the field.
This is true. Thus the old Soviet joke: “we pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us”. Collectivism simply destroys achievement altogether.
By the time a train loaded with materials arrived at it’s destination, it would be empty.
Though collectivism has always failed, Frances Fox Piven, Billy Ayers, Van Jones, Cass Sunstein, Harold Koh, Steven Chu and sundry other collectivists in and out of Obama’s coterie will tell you it just hasn’t yet been done right, historically.
They, of course, will “fix” all that.
Community organizing is a thinly veiled means to achieve the collectivist end. Even Billy Ayers now understands that full frontal assault violence ain’t gonna cut it and the wet dream can only be realized through stealth.
The transformation has been going on a long time. Public school students have been especially primed, over decades, as mentioned in
The Bezmenov analysis Paules mentions above
Though collectivism has always failed, Frances Fox Piven, Billy Ayers, Van Jones, Cass Sunstein, Harold Koh, Steven Chu and sundry other collectivists in and out of Obama’s coterie will tell you it just hasn’t yet been done right, historically.
They, of course, will “fix” all that.
The thing is that they won’t tell you how.
Time and time again, I’ve confronted Far Leftists in discussion groups and generally succeeded in getting them to admit the mass genocides that occurred under Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, et. al. (Some of them stubbornly insisted those events hadn’t happened or were massively exaggerated – just like the Holocaust Deniers.) But when I asked them what they would do differently to prevent such abuses, they just answer with a cheery “oh, don’t you worry about that, it will be different this time”. But if you persist and ask WHAT they will do differently, they go quiet and leave the conversation. Every damned time.
If they actually had a plausible alternative, I, for one, would like to hear it. I see no compelling reason why they would need or want to hide it. In fact, they should be shouting it from the rooftops as in “Hey, we have figured out a way to achieve Utopia WITHOUT killing huge numbers of people!”. They could then lay that vision out and, if it is plausible, persuade people to simply try it.
But they don’t do that. That tells me that they simply don’t HAVE any alternative to the same violent, brutal ways that were tried in the Soviet Union, China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Cuba, et. al. And that means it is an utter waste of time to even talk with them, let alone give them licence to try the same perverse ideas that were such a disaster the other times they were tried. As a wise man once said, it’s crazy to keep trying the same thing when it has failed every time it’s been tried.
I can think of nothing more persuasive than to see someone actually living the Marxist dream WITHOUT a gun to their heads. I’ve challenged Marxists on several occasions to cite a single VILLAGE, let alone a country, that actually practices Marxism without coercion, and where this results in a society that is demonstrably better than what we have here. No one has yet cited such an example.
If I could get the Marxist leadership to actually LISTEN to me, I’d challenge them to construct even one village that actually practiced Marxism as Marx described it, that didn’t use coercion, especially the threat of execution or starvation to enforce compliance with Marxism, and that still worked and led to happy people. If they could do that, they’d have an actual persuasive reason to consider Marxism as a possible approach to organizing a society. And if they COULDN’T produce such a society, I’d take a page from Reagan’s book and challenge them to disband Marxism, just the way the Berlin Wall was torn down. I truly believe that Marxism doesn’t work and, more importantly, CAN’T work. If the Marxists had an ounce of integrity, they would try to build this working model of Marxism and admit that it can’t be done, then shut up about Marxism forever after. (I’d be willing to allow for footnotes in history books pointing out in detail why Marxism was a fiasco but I would never want to hear anyone advocating Marxism again.)
But, of course, Marxists don’t have the integrity to admit that their preposterous system doesn’t work and can’t be made to work. Therefore, we are doomed to hearing about their Marx’s “wonderful” ideas as long as our universities keep generating new Marxists.
Everything you say that you would do with a Communist sounds convincing–to me, a non-communist and well educated in alternate thought patterns. All that you would do, would be of no avail relative to “the integrity” of the Communist mind. There is really an integrity there, but one that theoretically shuts counter evindence out. A Communist (of days gone past, perhaps still) would interpret your reasonings as a function of a “false consciousness” which in turn is an asymetric function of current socio-ECOMOMIC conditions. Your words would be seen as your very self-refutation. The central thesis of Marx (that I cannot do more than shrink into an inadequate assertion) is that “consciousness” (inl(including reasoning) per se is a function of material interests beyond the mind. Here is where one can begin to break down the Communist mode of explaining away counter evidence. If one can get a communist to admit that his theory is not a function of what is beyond his mind, rather of his mind’s OWN insights (which does not exclude “honest” error) said communist has fractured the logical integrity of his argumentation. If a communist does not show such an insight, drop the matter as said person has really lost intellectual integrity and is potentially dangerous.
Francis Fox Piven is the craziest of the lot- she advocates bankrupting the country with welfare payments on purpose in order to tear down the system. Yes, you read that right, a Socialist is advocating for as much socialism as it takes to bankrupt the country so the socialist government will collapse under its own weight so that there can be a socialist revolution. Even to a true believer that doesn’t make any sense.
If you ever get a chance to watch Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose on video (the 10 episode version from 1980), watch the discussions. I don’t recall which episode it is but Piven is one of the guests in one of them. The woman struck me as batsh*t crazy, just filled with rage and about as rational as the average rabid dog.
Were I to lockstep with the lemmings of collectivism towards the Utopia which never can exist, I would have to salute that speech as the anthem of co-dependency. I would pipe dream of being ever secure in the matrix of the nanny state, with someone else always to blame above or below me for my bad luck.
My big brother poster would have the perpetual finger wagging at me to remind me of my inferiority and subservience to the greater good. I would have to bow to the royality of the bayonet demanding charity to glorify the ruling class, the snarky, and culture of victimization.
Not happening!
the new line is gonna be ‘Romney didn’t build that – HE AVOIDED TAXES FOR 10 YEARS!’ or maybe ‘We built that for Mitt-fer-brains’
An interesting and eminently logical treatise. I am a simple guy and tend to boil things to their essence. In essence, personal responsibility is anethema to collectivists and liberals of all stripes.
As noted by French essayist Jean-François Revel in Last Exit to Utopia:
“Utopia is not under the slightest obligation to produce results: its sole function is to allow its devotees to condemn what exists in the name of what does not.”
This simple statement speaks volumes to me.
Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the 1830′s, described the Obama administration in his seminal work, Democracy In America.
“Thus, taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrial animals of which the government is the shepherd.”
Obama’s concept is that of America as a franchise. He lays the foundation for arguments to enforce illegal immigration. “If you did not help build it, you should not benefit from it.” Follow Obama’s thread and only the best of immigrants should be allowed to reside and work for citizenship.
BILL CLINTON TOLD BARAK OBAMA, “PLEASE,GO” during a Christmas time press conference that he dominated. I can’t wait for Nov. 6th to do the same thing — except it will be more along the lines of: Get the hell out of here.
Published on Jul 31, 2012 by matlarson10 **HELP SPREAD THIS VIDEO AND MESSAGE!**
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xiXFwalMQjc
“Such phrases have always been a preamble to looting. Coming from the president, it’s chilling.”
Anyone who pays attention has known for at least four years that Obama, and perhaps the majority of Congressional Democrats, follow the communist ideology.
“The two notions, collective achievement and collective punishment, are as inseparable as two sides of a coin.”
Don’t forget about the magical power of cognitive dissonance. It is possible to take credit for “collective achievement” while absolving oneself of the “crimes” that demand “collective punishment.”
In his book “Capitalism and Freedom” (1962) Milton Friedman (1912-2006) advocated minimizing the role of government in a free market as a means of creating political and social freedom. An excerpt from an interview with Phil Donahue in 1979.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWsx1X8PV_A
It also was written, as inspired in HEBREW a long, long time ago that unless these LAST DAYS BE SHORTENED THAT NO FLESH SHALL SURVIVE…BUT FOR THE ELECT’S SAKE, THOE DAYS WILL BE SHORTENED STARTING ON THIS SEPTEMBER 16, 2012 on the Annual Hebrew-inspred Feast of Trumpets(war) that these COMING days WILL BE SHORTENED! WATCH!
Starting 9/16: five-hour workday! Yay!
Hey, if it was inspired in Hebrew, then who are we to argue?
Those words may have been first spoken in Hebrew, but they were first written in Greek.
Actually what the Lefties forget is that where you have collective rights you have duties to that collective, and the collective can say when you personally measure up or not. Since you are its creature you are expendable at its whim.
Thus, under a collective sky, people who are not contribution according to their abilities, as judged by the collective, will face sanctions, for von Hayek, it is the whipping post. In our more enlightened times, it would be loss of social benefits, or more properly social rights. Thus sloth goes from being a character flaw or sin, to a criminal offense.
The GULAGs were just a place to put excess labor draw from those whom were judged less useful, or more troublesome. The whole population thus was like hens in a hen house: you knew you were going to get it but just no when.
No it is not the group issues or group guilt, it is rather what the group can do to you personally.
Beautiful article. One of the best expositions on fascism I’ve ever read.
For years I have been reading histories of Nazi Germany because I have long wondered how a country with such a high level of culture and intellect could have descended into barbarism so quickly and how a person like Hitler could ever have been revered the way he was. While all the histories were helpful, the descent of the country was still inexplicable to me. Then Obama was elected and I have followed his “leadership” for the past 3-1/2 years and what that leadership has done to America and I now understand how Hitler and his minions destroyed Germany.
It’s dangerous any time the people of a country identify a politician as their saviour, the answer to all their prayers, BEFORE he’s actually done anything.
It took Hitler years to become supreme leader. He started at the bottom and worked hard to rise within the Party, to eliminate his enemies, to win support from the citizens, to make his way to the top of the legitimate German government, and finally establish himself as Fuhrer.
Obama, on the other hand, hardly struggled at all. Apparently, all he had to do was show up on the Presidential ballot and the American people threw themselves at his feet. There were tears of joy at his inauguration. It was creepy. I didn’t think Americans were capable of projecting so much onto one man. I thought we were smarter, more practical, more cynical than that. Evidently, some of us are not.
Bugs,
I also suspect he had a syncophantic press as well. Despite being a history scholar, I’ve seen very little about how the German press covered Hitler in his ascendency. I suspect they covered him like the MSM covers Obama. I think most of this has gone down the German memory hole. I’ve always wished I could read German so I could see how Hitler was presented by the German press in the early 1930′s.
I don’t know, either. I have vague memories from reading that the mainstream German press (i.e., not pro-Socialist or far right-wing) considered him a crank at first, then warmed up to him as he continued his propaganda efforts. I imagine that by the time he became Chancellor it might have been a bit dangerous to criticize him too harshly. Not sure about any of that, though. Good question.
It’s a mistake to liken O to Hitler. There is one similarity, and one very big difference. The similarity is that both use emotional appeals. O appeals to resentment over income differences, and black resentment over white racism, both real and imaginary, to rally followers. He uses guilt over racism and a manufactured guilt over environmental exploitation in order to shame whites into silence.
Hitler used the German people’s resentment toward France and Britain for the harsh economic sanctions placed on Germany as the loser in WWI.
The difference between them is that O is not a nationalist. In fact, he has done everything he can to “humble” the US. Hitler’s Germany, on the other hand, was completely demoralized and empoverished by their loss of WWI, and believing in Arian superiority made it even worse. They wanted to restore their honor as a people, exact revenge on their enemies, and to establish their rule over them– “Deutschland über alles!” This is how Hitler was able to present himself as the saviour of the German people, and to succeed in gaining their active participation in his quest to turn them into a vast killing machine.
I say that ALL citizens have access and can use the “government programs” to be successful and that is a constant for all.
The ONLY difference is the hard work and risk taken by some people. Therefore, Obama’s statement is entirely false.
Some people succeed and some do not. It is the individual who makes the difference.
I see most people here are itching for more war. Must the west really go on with its murderous quest for dominance in the Middle East? For every $ spent by the west on warfare, China is spending the same on winning friends and gaining influence. From over here in S E Asia, there seems nothing much different in Dem or Rep policies: both dancing to the Wall Street piper.
My only comment on teamwork is that it seems fair to me that, when a rice farmer stoops all day doing all the graft, he should be earning more than a couple of dollars a day. There are numerous people involved in the process, from the planter to the supermarket buyer. You suggest, most of you, that it is Lord Sainsbury who should receive the reward and take the credit, simply because he had the wherewithal to fund the team.
He should be earning whatever amount he FREELY agreed to TRADE his labor for.
Yes and each one of them TRADES something of value (e.g. labor) in order to receive something else of value (e.g., money) in return. As long as both parties uphold their end of bargain, there is nothing immoral about one receiving more or less than the other.
And where would “the team” be without Lord Sainsbury’s funding? Starving…that’s where.
Lord Sainsbury earns more than the farmer or the planter or the supermarket buyer because 1) he TRADES more and 2) he makes TRADES that have positive equity.
And that’s the simple fact that you collectivists are incapable of grasping: that an economic system is nothing but the sum total of the trades that occur between individuals within that system – nothing more, nothing less. If you consistently make trades that have negative equity, you will eventually become poor…if they have positive equity, you will eventually become rich. The end.
Should he really be earning more? Yes, it is a physically demanding and tedious job, and by your own post, it is obviously one you would not be willing to do. However, that is why you are not out there in the fields picking the rice. Consider this – how easy is it to find someone who can do that job? How many other laborers are there who can pick the rice? For every person willing an dable to do the job, the value of the labor drops because there will likely be someone willing to take the job for the amount being offered. It’s hard for a rice laborer to demand a cushy $30/hour if he has a bunch of competition for the job and each is willing to take less per hour than he is. And honestly, so long as there is one other person willing and able to do the job for less money who can do it better than he can, who are you to interfere? Why do you care? There might be a good reason why he’s out there picking rice at that wage. It might be to his advantage to do so no matter how awful and underpaid it might seem to you, and if you interfere for everyone’s “good” without understanding what’s going on, you might actually be harming more than you’re helping.
So that explains why Obama won’t take the blame for his failed policies and blames everyone else……..it takes a nation to make you successful and it took a nationto make you fail. Its like Hillary Clinton’s….it takes a village to raise a child. That is really skewed thinking.
I wasn’t raised that way and neither were my kids.
Some people were born to poorly educated or uneducated parents. If IQ is near their parents, they have less a chance at success. Of course, some do not actually try to overcome. Their vote is for sale for handouts.
I met Oleg Atbashian in Austin this past year, and have read his book “Shakedown Socialism”. His words should be taken seriously and his knowledge and understanding of tyranny are exceptionally good examples of what awaits the US, if we don’t reverse our course.
Twitter’s New Political Index Proves Big Data Knows What You’re Thinking By Mat Honan
August 1, 2012
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/twindex_twitter_politicalindex/
Town Hall Questioner To Obama: “I’m Exhausted Of Defending You”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/09/20/cnbc_town_hall_questioner_to_obama_im_exhausted_of_defending_you.html
A very neat clip! I was especially struck by how Obama gave an “Aw shucks, aren’t I just the neatest thing ever” look when she started making her frustration with him clear. I had the impression that he really didn’t get that she was criticizing him! I truly believe because she was speaking with a calm and pleasant tone of voice, he just assumed she was saying something very favorable about him, even though the reverse was true. I don’t think he was listening to her words at all, at least not until well into her remarks. Maybe he really IS as narcissistic as people here are saying!
Oleg, another inspiring piece! I and my spousal unit procured a copy of your “Shakedown Socialism” and we have recommended to all!
When I first encountered thepeoplescube.com I was as amazed as I was when I first heard Rush Limbaugh! My inner voice, so longing, was being heard!
Yes, it is the individual that makes the difference! I have always been inspired by competition! Sometimes I lose, sometimes I actually excel, just because someone better than me showed me the way! Because of them I found something deep within myself that said, “Maybe I can do that too! Let me see if I can! And I did!”
Your insight and life-experience benefits us all Oleg! Thank you!
You have my full support! Keep it up!
Wow. Chilling breakdown of Obama’s, et al. horrifying vision for America.
I do wish to make some more comments.
CULTURALLY, Obama is a SOB. Given a chance, he would never collectivize. He wants the merit for success to go to “somebody else”, read “the Glorious Leader, Obama”, and the blame for the failure to remain individual. If a company fails, Obama has hands clean. He would tax them some more though.
Obama, Marx, Marxists, Democrats, Muhammad, Muslims. Such a diverse crowd. What puts them together? The fact that they are looters. This great republic has been founded by farmers, as opposed to looters. That’s why looters hate it so viscerally.
How can I tell that Obama and Dems are looters? By the tax rate. As you increase the tax rate, you increase the revenue, up to a point. Then, as you increase the tax rate, you DECREASE the revenue. USA is long past that point. It means that they are not only interested in looting, but also in keeping the looted down. The lopsided tax code deforms the market, and is a further indication of Dems being looters. The constitution of the USA is so short that I keep it in my pocket all the time. The constitution of EU and the Obamacare law are so long that nobody ever has read them. The point: make it complex, Chicago-style, so that it means whatever you want, whenever you want it to mean.
Democratic Party is one big cargo cult. BTW, my name at http://www.thepeoplescube.com is John Frum. Tellingly.
Marx: “The communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows to be the solution.” Now that’s pretty darn much a big thing: turning History from storytelling (bard’s domain) into exact science. Einstein and a hundred biggest minds of mankind together can’t aspire to this much. It just happened by chance that Marxism improved the lot of Marx. Marx would have spelled out those scientific truths even if they hurt his lot. What does Marx call the adversaries and those who don’t line up to his scientific truths? What not. Lumpenproletariat, for one. By chance, “kulak” means “wealthy farmer.” Yes, the worst enemy of the looter is the looted, the wealthy farmer. By chance.
In Arabic “farmer”, “poor”, “infidel” have the same etymological root. Looters anybody? Also “black” and “slave” are exactly the same word: “abd”. Somebody tell Farrakhan, Ellison, Black Pampers that they have been had, again. It so happens that slavery today exists massively in the fault-line between Arab-Muslim world and Black Africa.
After many failures, Marxism is evolving, with Antonio Gramsci, Marcuse and others. Original diehard Marxists would call these guys revisionists and hang them from the nearest pole. Anyway, this evolution is also sign of corruption and impending collapse.
What happens if/when looters win? We know this, and have ample examples from history. When looters think that there is already enough for them, they do what a pack of hyenas do after they’ve killed a bull. They lacerate each other. Ecologists anybody? Overpopulation, Malthus, Al Gore anybody?
Wherever there is wealth, there will be looters. The solution to this? Farmers must be more aggressive. Hence the geniality of the Second Amendment. Hence the obsession of the looters with the Second Amendment. They know what stands on their way. Anyway, we must be some more aggressive. As testified by the level of loot, our level of aggression is not yet enough to fend them off, demoralize them, disgregate them.
The first reply was grand, but the chaser sputtered after the first powerful assertion: “Wherever there is wealth, there will be looters!”
Wherever a farmer has crop there will be … all sorts of predators, bugs and blights a’ready to prey. And for very few of them will a gun be useful, only for varmints, foxes and wolves. A farmer who wastes money on guns when he needs to hoe, to screen and to spray is a farmer no more. Vigilance is key, wisdom and research on the types and habits of the attackers. And yes, as you seem to suggest a pro-active OFFENSE is needed. Most attackers have habits that can easily be acted against beforehand.
But these attackers now are very cunning for they have gone after the farmer’s children and families. The farmer has been convinced to give his own children over to them. Will you shoot your own children? Or even anyone?
You call them looters, but they are also in our time family and friends. Your resort to guns is no solution. The dear second amendment deserves MORE respect. The modern era’s Boer’s — the white farmers of the nation formerly known as Rhodesia — they had plenty of guns and good knowledge in their usage. Did that save them? No.
Like a great farmer who comes to ken which is the proper tactic to use against the current seasons affliction, so too must we come to reckon the proper tactic to employ, the proper tactics. To use guns is utter foolishness, wasteful and will not work now.
“It didn’t work once” doesn’t mean “it never works.” By farmer I mean anybody who produces, included an accountant who works his day, and a lawyer or a politician who fights for what he believes. And for me lawyer and politician are the two biggest looter professions. Think lawsuit industry, the perfect looting that destroyed our healthcare, and now want to get us further down that road.
What looters here in USA are trying to do is to subvert the constitution, maybe rewrite it, replace it “with a more modern one” in order to create a relationship farmer-looter similar to that of UK. The evolution of UK was that of an absolute king (a looter) who gradually had to cede power in order to survive. The evolution of US is that of a country where the farmer (producer) flourished “too much”.
There is a historic period of our evolution when all of our ancestors were looters, whether that gratifies us or not. That period was long enough to get fixed in our genes. We have generally overcome this period, but for the eternity there will be atavisms, because atavisms have an important role to play in the evolution. They are knocks in the door, “it it again my time yet?” Same happened with the arms. When we were fish, they were lateral. When we became earth animals, they were frontal. When we became biped, they quickly became lateral again, because convenient, and helped by atavisms.
The analogy does not go as far as you take it. These looters that are trying to conquer this farmer republic want to create a symbiotic relationship similar to what they see and admire in other countries. They are so obsessed with USA because we are the example that works and undermines them.
You can add the message of collective salvation to the litany. No one can be saved unless we can all be saved.
If leftists can’t understand how dangerous this is, they are all clearly smoking something or they are the most useful of idiots. They’ll all be cheering because we’ll be the first to be culled of course, but we won’t be there when someone comes for them. The loudest voices are almost always the first to be taken.
How extraordinarily silly. Firstly a puffed-up article, disguised as a learned critique, where it seems that the only motive was to find an excuse to talk about Fascism, Hitler, Mussolini,and Marxism and trick the reader into believing that Obama was a reincarnation of them all. And of course, gullible readers have swallowed the bait.
Further examples of pathetic, puerile, pusillanimous and peevish political debate. It is scary that America harbours such paranoia, such narrow-mindedness and such odium for democracy.
Max King, I wish you read my comments just above yours. Not that you’ll approve of me, but I want to show you the light anyway. And yes, I am a learned person with 5 fluently spoken languages, 1 more intermediate language, a PhD in Mathematics, working on a second degree in Aerospace Engineering, been Math professor at some of the best universities in the world.
I do know that opinions are like nuts, everybody has their own. And that we say “he is smart” anytime somebody approves of us. Nonetheless and whatever.
A bizarre comment oh! learned friend. An argument predicated on an ad hominem assessment (viz. looter) and further manipulated to develop a fallacious argument in the same ad hominem style lacks credibility. Stick to mathematics mate – as an aside, why do you need to brag about your degree in your alias?.
If indeed your Ph.D is fair dinkum, and you are possessed of some intellectual capacity, i find it sad that you did not apply the rigour of mathematical proof to your arguments and disappointing that your tone was adversarial.
By the way, I have a PhD in neurophysiology, a M.A.psychology, – taught undergraduates in Medical Schools and Post-graduate MDs (biochemistry and neuropharmacology of psychiatric disorders). I have long since retired from teaching and research and am looking forward to commencing my ninth decade next year. “Max King” is the nickname that I stole from the principal character in the delightful King Max (the hodgeheg) books by Dick King-Smith – my youngest grandchild adored those books. I recommend them.
bla bla bla. Sorry for paying attention to you in the first place.
Oh, friend in doctor titles, sometimes we “educated” intellectuals commit a fundamental error. What is that? We ascribe the same intellectual integrity to a person such a Max King as we do to colleagues or students seeking knowledge. Mr. King was baiting you all along. There is no way in a comment to unwine the long series of loaded terms he has spewed out. He has a firm stand point: Anyone that disagrees with him, deserves belittling disparagement. Should he be confronted with someone with a doctoral title, he must disarm and devaluate the intellectual honesty or capacity of his opponent. Your last answer of “blah, blah”, should have been your first.
P.S. Mr. “King”, I have studied at universities in 4 countries, obtaining 3 doctorates (I would have had a 4th but the phantasies of Spring deflected my interests), published in 4 languares including Chinese (translated) and, for awhile, had some standing in circles in China, I still do in Taiwan. Years ago I met and befriended a low-level diplomat when the Checks were ruled by communism. We were able to discuss, often in dialectically complicated locutions, matters rationally. Not once did he hurl your type of insults, though he considered W.Germany to be a fascist state, out of theoretical grounds. If you wish to encounter a worthy recipient of your insults, look in the mirror.
I hope you like my take on Marxism, Obamaism and other stuff, Prof. Leonard W.
I consider Marxism a reactionary idea that belongs in the nineteenth century, no matter what those reactionary liberals have themselves believe.
A former student of mine said it best, “Obama’s ideas are just not right for this time and this country, not to mention his crappy foreign policy.”
Colleague, Ph.D. in Mathematics: I agree without reserve re your negative evaluation of communism. Theoretically you are not FULLY correct. Marx’s Marxism was not “reactionary”, particularly in the 19th Century. Savigny (Prussia) or Metternich (Austria), these men were reactionaries. Marx was a radical progressive revolutionary. Marx thought that the existing world would end in total destruction giving way to a utopian harmony–and all by the inner actions of the law of history. By his death (1883?) this was not so. Lenin, filled with this revolutionary vision of total destruction and total creation claimed that such a revolution is not automatic, rather required organization, i.e., the party, “democratic centralism”, the dictator. This changed the game. Lenin had to seize power from resisting institutions and people. After that, Lenin had to build up from scratch his utopia. At this point the use of terror enters into Marx’s “theoretical” utopia as the necessary means of realization. I will illustrate.
I remember the words of Lenin (which I will repeat from a fading memory) to the effect:”Getting rid of the bourgeois is no problem. One places them against the wall and one shoots them dead. But, the ‘capitalism’ in the head of the farmer (e.g., he wants to earn more than his neighbor) is another matter.” This is the point that Lenin and his utopian allies had to become practicioner of “Realpolitik”, i.e., to use terror to re-create a society according to his dictates. You with your personal experience enter into the picture at the point, i.e., the society of force has been erected and, like all dictatorships, it is struturally “reactionary”. Here you are absolutely right. What you describe with your experiences in schools in Albanian, provokes feelings of sadness in me and solidarity with you. I was stimulated by teachers to think for myself and your thinking for yourself was blocked. Such blocking structures are, indeed, reactionary.
I do hope that I have presented a plausible case. I am very restrained in the presence of fine thinking and fine feeling people who have experienced unmediated tranny. I have not had such misfortunate. I have a “theoretical” understanding of such suffering, but no claim to associate myself with it. I admire your audacity and wish you the best. You have it in you to realize your dreams. That is what America should be about!
Wrote at length about this, it didn’t go through. Will write now a more concise version, hoping to make it through.
I was surprised to learn in internet that Marx actually was for the parliamentary takeover. In school they told me for a fact that Marx invented the dictatorship of the proletariat. Maybe Lenin. Maybe that’s why they call it Marxism-Leninism. Whatever.
Marx is a very negative person notwithstanding. Were his teachings highjacked somewhere along the line? It does not matter. Marx was a parasite himself, and a Malthusian. Engels wasn’t a Malthusian, he was opposed. Engels was a producer with a positive outlook of the world, putting faith in the contribution of science in the solution of problems.
What did Engels say in the funeral of Marx? “… the greatest living thinker ceased to think.” Sure he was the greatest living thinker, he turned history into exact science. He solved the riddle of history. The solution was wrong, but that absolutely doesn’t matter.
For many years I have wondered, how do these people reconcile equality for all with the Darwinian “survival of the fittest”? Then the religious syncretism comes to mind.
BTW, “survival of the fittest” is plain wrong. The truth is more complicated, and not as much of a catchphrase. Somehow I would rephrase evolution as “the collapse of the unlucky less fit of the moment”. More than the fittest survive. The definition of “fittest” is indeed very volatile and changes all the time. What was advantageous few hours ago, turns disadvantageous now. And the evolution works in slower ways, in the sense that simply the generally fittest gets some more chance to mate and leave more babies. At the long run that adds up. Random mutations play some role.
A very small part of what a person improved in life gets fixed in his genes and passes on. I know that I sound like Lysenko now, but that’s how it is. That part is tiny and unobservable, but adds up over many generations. That cretin of Lysenko made this the holy grail that it is not.
To his credit, towards of the end of their lives, Engels did write to Marx that the proletariat of London was not in the least interested on the proletarian revolution, that they were rather interested on getting rich, working hard on that, and some making it.
That’s a much waited for sigh of relief, but that didn’t make them denounce aloud: We have been wrong all along.
I did find something about Marx, that brings him forth as a reactionary. The comment follows, and is from http://frontpagemag.com/2012/spyridon-mitsotakis/red-and-black-tragedy/
For myself I do know that Marx was a racist and hated Scots, Poles and Balkans, because we hold the wheel of history back. So much for the revolutionary…
There is no need for me to speak either of the good or of the bad aspects of freedom. As for slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects. The only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do not mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the southern regions of North America.
Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. It is slavery which has given value to the colonies, it is the colonies which have created world trade, and world trade is the necessary condition for large-scale machine industry. Consequently, prior to the slave trade, the colonies sent very few products to the Old World, and did not noticeably change the face of the world. Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance. Without slavery, North America, the most progressive nation, would be transformed into a patriarchal country. Only wipe North America off the map and you will get anarchy, the complete decay of trade and modern civilization. But to do away with slavery would be to wipe America off the map. Being an economic category, slavery has existed in all nations since the beginning of the world. All that modern nations have achieved is to disguise slavery at home and import it openly into the New World.
I think it is very easy to simply say that those who favor the distribution of wealth are looters. It is not too difficult to see that in a society which believes it is existentially/collectively really not very unsimilar from a colony of algae on a log that voices would arise which suggest the time for individual profits are over, and we should think of the earth as something to protect at all costs, to actualize economics and politics in lieu of only that which is good (considering the limitation of resources) for all the people at any moment. And, of course, realign and reappraise our morals and traditions to be steadfast for the cause of humanity in the Evolutionary Universe where our claim to value can be no greater than literally algae on a log. Makes perfect sense.
This is the what the indoctrination of Evolution has wrought. You can make no case against the “looters” from the failures of the past, because that is simply missing the point. The point is to try try try to control your evolution, and what fool of evolutionary discipline would suggest that personal property and gun rights are essential to the species? Do you not know that in the Evolutionary worldview their are no criminals, but poor environments, and disfunctional genes which we will inevitabley be able to switch off? Don’t you realize you are standing in the way of Evolutionary progress when you cling to guns and religion? If all the conservatives got out of the way we’d have Utopia in 10 years or so.
Such relics of the difficult past will be pushed aside for the clarity and unity that entails the perfect analogy of Algae on a Log.
Isn’t it strange that the Evolutionary foundations of such terrors of Collectivism’s past is highly ignored? The world, even its conservatives, simply believe that those tyrants and madmen misused their understanding of evolution. So, the world will keep trying, gravitating towards more socialism, reassessing from the failures of the violent, forceful losers of the past, while conservativism begins to die, like the, dare I say it, the dinosaurs. The game is already lost, you just don’t know it yet.
Are you saying that evolution is true, but we would be better off not knowing it, or that evolution isn’t true, and was invented by totalitarians who want to enslave you?
I tell you the ultimate truth about the evolution. Evolution has been known to mankind for some 3000 years before Darwin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution#History_of_evolutionary_thought
The grandfather of Darwin knew it. It was very popular before the birth of Darwin. What did Darwin do then? He travelled the world for 5 years at king’s dime, and came back home to write the scientific version of Robinson Crusoe that amazed everybody. THIS is why we attribute the evolution to him.
What else? Something very, very nefarious. He mixed evolution with Malthus, and created the potion responsible for the death of the empire that fed him. How good an understanding Darwin had of evolution? You understand well a science if you can predict the results, and then verify them. Darwin believed in the creating of the superman and set to work on it. He and some 12 other British clans self-appointed themselves as the selected ones of the mankind and decided to inbreed in order to rapidly improve the race and bring about the superman. How did it end up? Within a few generations, sick and deformed children were being born instead of the superman, and the experiment was abandoned.
Evolution is a fact. By denying the evolution we put Malthusians in a very impregnable position.
BTW, Malthusians are the ultimate looters that inspire everybody, from Al Gore to Obama to a large cabal that opposes everything that works (coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear power, hydropower) and keeps us busy proposing scientific ideas well-though to not work, like hydrogen economy.
Even the idea of Malthus on overpopulation. While scientifically completely wrong, it appeals to the basic instinct of the looter to out all allies-turned-adversaries because there is enough for them to go around.
Malthus was wrong about the interpretations of the data he had at hand, and for everybody to see was wrong about the future. How many times have they postponed the Malthusian doomsday? They always propose a new one, which I have observed has a few nice characteristics. It is close enough to have everybody worried. If it were in a century nobody would give a damn. It is far enough to give Malthusians time to alarm everybody and propose solutions.
More the latter, but I’m not saying it was invented consciously with the intent to enslave anyone. Or at least, I am not able to make that judgement. It is just that it is simply the case when anything subverts the truth, that people subject to that subversion will invariably suffer for it.
That answers your post, but I’ll say more.
Evolution most certainly does subvert truth and facts. The fact is that the theory plays to a sense of intuition because Natural Selection does happen. We see Natural Selection. It is science. It can be repeated and tested. Living things will change according to their environment to an extent. They have all the information for the breadth of their ability to change already in their genes. Of course, sometimes there is a mutation that stays in the gene pool, like blue eyes or bacterial resistance to antibiotics, but it is a loss of genetic information. Evolution necessarily is contigent on the idea that new information is being created as things reproduce. We do not see this.
The reason that so many people equivocate NS with Evolution is most likely because the media and Evolutionary scientists have promoted such Natural Selection cases as Evolution, and used the terms interchangabley. If you would want to hear more detail about these things and more I recommend Answersingenesis dot org.
The fact is, according to observable science we only see animals changing according to their kind. Dogs stay dogs, horses stay horses, humans stay humans. Such observation is a credit to the Genesis account, which for a Biblical Christian Creationist is the start point of science. You see, Creationism does not subvert science, but accepts it for what it is, and what it is able to achieve for humans in our capacity to use it. There is no subversion, but simply an acceptance for the Biblical start point, and certain parameters and phenomena which were said to have happened. You would think that in the modern world if there existed no Grand Canyon, no clam shells found in mountain ranges, no record of millions of fossils from a lost world buried all over the earth, no observable stasis of animals within their kinds that Creationists would be easily seen as grasping at their failed belief. Is that the case? How was an ancient religion’s account of our origins able to remain relevant in our modern world? It could be seen as amazing circumstantial evidence in lieu of a God who is a God of Faith.
Even if you were to allow that the science behind long ages is sound. that it is justifiable, you do not simply get evolution. I’ve talked to people myself, and also seen on the internet that people simply believe that Natural Selection plus enough time equals evolution. This is the “fact” that exists in their minds. As far as I understand it, it is a new-age religion, and the fact that the world is majoritively accepting it coincides with Biblical prediction. Think about it. What could possibly be the basis of a one-world religion without hitting the ire of today’s modern man? One that is touted as Science.
Just look at the mathematician here, who seems to think that because ideas have existed in the past which were more crude or contrived versions of Evolution that somehow that is evidence or argument for it. Learned people are deceived, just as the Bible predicted.
No, I don’t think that an idea becomes true because it has been around for thousands of years. I do think that because an idea has been around for thousands of years, Darwin didn’t invent it. We are giving Darwin way too much credit. He is just a scientific Daniel Defoe. Then he did get a whole lot wrong, like the superman thing. Think of it, the whole family and descendants of Darwin still are in key roles in the Eugenics Society. Add more ignominy to infamy.
“Of course, sometimes there is a mutation that stays in the gene pool, like blue eyes or bacterial resistance to antibiotics, but it is a loss of genetic information. Evolution necessarily is contingent on the idea that new information is being created as things reproduce. We do not see this.”
Blue eyes (that’s a loss?) and resistance to antibiotics ARE new information. You just refuse to recognize them as such. New information isn’t created as things reproduce. Mutations create new information, but the environment decides what information is selected, which is rejected, or simply not relevant in that environment. Speciation is simply natural selection carried one logical step further.
“The fact is, according to observable science we only see animals changing according to their kind.”
You won’t see speciation occur on a human time scale. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
“Creationism does not subvert science”
Except when science contradicts the Biblical account. Then you turn science on its ear. Or reinterpret the Bible.
“How was an ancient religion’s account of our origins able to remain relevant in our modern world?”
Anyone with intelligence and an observant eye could come up with a logical progression of the “creation” of the world as it was known at the time. The first Genesis account (there are two) is an example of starting with an hypothesis and working backwards to provide “evidence”. The hypothesis is an all knowing, all-present, all-powerful and all-good God who created all things. The first question is how and from what did he make the world? The second is did he make everything all at once or in stages? The next is how and from what did he make the living things? Next, how and from what did he make Man? The last is, why is there evil, including the greatest evil, death?
If you posit any substance at all that he made the world from, then you must ask who made the substance? Ultimately, you must end this logical regression with “nothing’.
Next you need the earth since all living things live on the earth. Next you need water because all living things need water. Then you need light since plants need light. Next you can have animals because they live on plants and each other. Next you have Man, because he needs all the preceding things
in order to live.
Why did it take 6 days? Because God was viewed as being anthropomorphic (man-like). Man builds things one step at a time. God rested on the 7th day-the Sabbath, just as the Hebrews did. But more importantly, this stepwise creation was intended to declare that the creation was good in every detail–a direct repudiation of other philosophies and religions that declared that the world is evil or in the hands of evil gods.
If God is all-good, then how can his creation have evil of any kind in it? Because Man committed sin, which brought evil and death to the world. But since God made Man, how could Man commit evil? Because God also gave him ‘free will’ just as he himself has.
You see, this is how it ‘had to be’ in order for the hypothesis to be plausible in every detail. But if Man is a material manifestation of natural laws, he doesn’t have ‘free will’ in this theological sense, and consequently, the whole edifice crumbles. That’s one reason why religion and science are irredeemably incompatible.
“You didn’t build that” is an apt description of obama’s life. All his life he has been given things. Affirmative action; preferential college entry; someone else paid his tuition; grades to get him a degree, but not good enough to publish; a guilt-ridden MSM; an easily manipulated racial group to vote for him; airhead-whites to vote for him. Keep remembering that Obama was elected by only 30% of registered voters. There was a 58% turnout and of the people who actually voted, 52% voted for Obama. Multiply 0.58 and 0.52 and you get 0.30. Just 30% of registered voters saddled us with Obama. Forget about the polls and just vote.
We have a hut with a nice elephant skin rug for Michelle and OBumble back here at tribal headquarters. He has already started mailing White House china and silverware to our village.
Lipstick on a pig comes to mind.
Court Demands TSA Explain Why It Is Defying ‘Nude’ Body Scanner Order BY DAVID KRAVETS 08.01.12
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/nude-scanner-order/
I am happy that Comrade Red Square is second-best to Andrew Klavan for the interest generated (measured by the number of comments), by a small margin.
Looking forward to meet Comrade Red Square someday. Today is a happy day for me, as I had the last exam of the semester. Anxious to see my final grades that I didn’t earn. Somebody else paid fees, skipped Facebook, took loan, took 15 credits per semester while keeping a full-time job and a 3.7 GPA. Somebody else is doing it for me, but I haven’t yet figured out who that somebody else is.
I suffer from Facebook withdrawal symptoms, that’s why I come here and waste my time talking about Comrade Obama and Our Lord, The Infallible, Marx.
I got it. That somebody else is Artan Sinollari, my Albanian professor of Marxism in high school. He has given me the everlasting thrust, sufficient to make me go to Mars, preferring a barren rock to people like him. I will figure this out. Gotta go to Mars.
I repeat that in high school I wasn’t really a revolutionary, dissident or whatsoever else. I minded my own business and studied the Marxism class very well. This guy had the dastardly habit of asking me questions. I answered by the book. He used to say once no, then bla bla bla bla bla bla elaborated on his no. By the end of the class I had answered all the questions by the book and got a no every time. I got a 7 in Marxism, that by law barred me from continuing my studies in Mathematics, as I was not enough ideologically lucid as to continue Math.
Another trick that he employed was to leave me alone for extended periods, in order to catch me unprepared. That never worked.
I never figured out why did he hit on me, a humble one minding my own business. It’s been 22 years that I don’t care to know, but back then it was a life-or-death burden.
For pig imperialist Americans (thick heads) to understand, it is a capital offense to make up stuff in Marxism. You are ABSOLUTELY not allowed to answer wrong. Not in Albania. It is OK to make up stuff in Mathematics, that can make the professor laugh. Behold getting the Marxism wrong!
Another very important point, comrades. A cute comradette from Tampa, FL with a PhD in, you guessed it, Anthropology, started attacking me “What do you know about Marx? What do you know about Marcuse? What do you know about Gramsci? What do you know about Social Engineering?”
They have gone very far, far away in painting the railway station in their garage, to the point that they believe it true. It is indeed very elaborate. The answer to this is NOT to study 100,000 pages of their crap in order to feel qualified to debate them and win with them in a “rational level” of their agreement, that you never can. Already reading until earning their respect as a qualifier debater will screw your life beyond repair.
The answer to this is to erode their ground with what you know, and most likely you know more about real things than them. As the great Reagan said it best, “Our liberal friends are not ignorant. They know too many things wrong.” Tell them that because their theory fails every day, it must be wrong. Bring them examples. Yes, I know that they will blame what not. Ask them for one example when their ideas worked. They will say “we haven’t yet got it right.”
And another approach is to let go the most cretins of them, and spend your energies the most efficiently possible with people for whom there is hope. We don’t have to save each and everyone of those miserable souls. Let’s optimize our energies and save first the most salvable ones.
I am waiting for Obama’s next speech, to be delivered to returning medaled Olympians.
Title and theme: “You Didn’t Win That.”
Stagflation Explained
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTz_tx460EY
“blame someone else”
That’s our Bambi….
A word or two about where we’re headed:
We live in a very selfish, materialistic society. Government, instead of trying to curb or discourage us from such attitudes (which it has no business doing in the first place), seeks to take advantage of these vices for its own selfish purposes.
The liberal model for an ideal society can be summed up in two words: No consequences.
“By giving government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal, and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.” F.A. Hayek
“On the people, therefore, of these United States, it depends whether wise men, or fools, good or bad men, shall govern….” Samuel Langdon
Great website, maybe we can share links?