Bruce Walker @ American Thinker:
Leftism is not an ideology. No sane person thinks “soaking the rich” or “investing tax dollars” achieves any particular objective. The creation of predefined bogeymen is an ancient and unsavory strategy for seizing and then holding power — the Jewish people can testify to that grim fact — and there is nothing more to it than that. Leftist leaders today are simply the barbarian warlords of centuries ago who promised to steal and to share the spoils of what others have worked to produce.
Marxism is only one of several contemporary mantras dreamed up to let party bosses rob and loot. The Nazis, too, denounced capitalism and claimed that they were victims of oppression. The similarity between these two malign modern barbarians was such that many commentators of the time saw them as not just similar, but practically identical. The conjuring up of eternal victims and eternal victimizers was at the heart of this black magic.
Because the purpose of these sorts of systems is not the achievement of professed goals, but rather permanent justification for holding power, Obama pretends that some shadowy plutocrat has been running the federal government for the last four years and acts like his old failures can be transformed into credible hope by changing the tone of his voice or the alliteration of his delivery. It is all, to leftists, make-believe anyway.
Leftism is at its heart the enemy of all empiricism. It grips fiercely the banner of idealism as if there were any special virtue in idealism. Medieval physicians used idealism instead of practical sense, and they murdered patients. Flagellants idealistically battled the plague. When men willing to be governed by experience studied pathology, the science of medicine began. Results, not theories, are the core of healing arts.
Conservatives derive theories from results, and not the other way around. This means that conservatives are at the forefront of real experiments while leftists squat down around a midnight campfire with medicine bones. We are guided by what works. Once, conservatives supported higher taxes to fight deficits because we thought skyrocketing federal debt created a burden which would eventually crush us and that higher taxes brought higher revenue. Arthur Laffer thirty years ago proposed his curve, which showed the maximum tax rate for optimizing tax revenues. Reagan tested his theory. It worked; we adopted it as proven.
Once, conservatives supported the food stamp program as a sensible way to reduce hunger in America. Farmers, among the hardest-working and productive of us, often had surpluses pushing down prices while our poorest countrymen did not have enough to eat. Give the poor food vouchers, which could not be used like welfare payments for any purpose, and this would increase farm income and actually feed the poor. When fraud and abuse make a mockery of these intentions, conservatives stop supporting the program; it doesn’t work as planned.
How boring. The ultra-right-wing is still talking about Marxism like it is something.
@liberal1(objectivity):
And the left is still denying the roots of their “religion” stems from it.
Who’s right?
I read this article yesterday on AT. Leftism, statism, socialism, progressivism, or whatever other “-ism” you want to assign to it is, in fact, tedious. A monotony of constant barking about one “evil” or another. Some strawman that needs killing. Pining over the “victims” capitalist society creates. And promising the “perfect”, if only people would give it a chance. Again. And again. And again.
As I said, and the article stated, ……….. tedious.
The left goes on and on about how, if we only would apply their ideas, again, that they can be done smarter, and more brilliantly, this time around. And, as happens, every time, a complete and utter failure.
Is it not enough to look at the pure communist societies that have existed in our world history, and see how they create actual victims?
No, the leftists claim that the ideas used weren’t effective enough, for a variety of reasons, EXCEPT that they do not work. Instead, they want to apply more money, or encompass more people (as “victims”), or punish success further, etc.
What they really want, though they won’t say it, and most likely don’t recognize it, is to fail. Again.
Why? As the article stated, it keeps them in power. And when one windmill isn’t big enough to cow the people, the create another one for their valiant statist knight to defeat. And maybe this windmill threatens more than just the poor people. Say, like the “middle class”. Or, instead of just the black people, it threatens the hispanics. Or, not just single women, but ALL women. Always a different windmill. Always presented as a fearsome dragon to defeat. And yet, never defeated. Or, always another one to defeat the next time they want your vote. To stay in power.
It would almost be comical, if it didn’t affect actual, live people trying to make their way in life. Succeeding and failing based on things they, themselves, actually built.
There’s an interesting story on NPR today. Has to do with the Hawaii Senate race. Seems that a popular GOP two term governor is running for an open senate seat against a Democratic candidate that the Republican defeated twice in the governor’s race. With the battle for the control of the Senate in the balance, this seat is crucial to both parties. On a statewide basis, the popular Republican (who, of course, is a relatively liberal Republican, in the mold of Scott Brown — otherwise she’d never have been elected governor) would be the favorite, but she’s ostensibly the underdog, because the Senate seat is being considered by the voters in the context of potentially giving control of the Senate to the Republicans, and they don’t like the national Republicans because of, among other things, the whole “birther” issue.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/09/13/161096416/can-a-republican-win-a-senate-seat-in-blue-hawaii
It would be ironic if Donald Trump ended up costing the GOP control of the Senate.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA