Friday, February 05, 2010

Is it Crazy to Call Obama a Socialist or a Fascist?

Well that's what we keep hearing, as Morgan recently noted, and I've seen out there in internet land, and from pundits on TV. 

We have people haughtily calling us stupid and insane for calling a spade a spade, as if we, like most of them, don't really know what the words mean.   As I said in one comment on a YouTube video out there:
if Socialized Medicine isn’t socialism … if nationalizing companies isn’t socialism … if redistribution of wealth isn’t socialism … maybe we have different dictionaries.
So ... no. It's not crazy.

Read your history, they admonish us.   Well I have.  And it's apparent that either they haven't, or they're banking on the fact that a lot of people haven't and that we will just buy what they're saying, cower before their derision, and Shut Up.   Fortunately knowledge is a good inoculation against such ridicule.

Nazi is short for Nationalsozialist … which was a term for supporters of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or the National Socialist German Worker’s Party.

Be very suspicious about any political movement with the word “workers” in the title.  They're all brothers.  Communism, Socialism, Fascism, and Nazism.

Fascism was the Italian National Socialist movement. Hairs are split about how “socialistic” national socialism really was because the global socialists (eg: the Soviets) considered it “right-wing” socialism, which is probably why the term is used to smear conservatives. Either way, they were collectivist systems. And does it really matter if the state runs the corporations or the corporations run the state? Either way, the State and Corporations are one in these systems.

National Socialism was considered “right-wing” because (again, by its close relative just to its left) of it’s emphasis on strong, strict, social controls.

But are you really going to try to convince me that the Soviets and the Maoists didn’t use strict social control?

I think the globalists kid themselves about how different they really are, and how egalitarian they really are.  The Ruling Class always develops, and it always has special privileges.

I also think the reasons they object to the term "socialist" are 1) bad connotation due to abuses of socialist governments in the 20th century (in other words, it's bad marketing) and 2) they really think that they can do this gradually, without a bloody revolution, and everybody will just be happy once we all see how wonderful it is.  So in other words, no boody revolution, no "Socialism".

But they fail to see ... the reason that we are anti-socialist has little to do with the bloody revolution aspect.  It has to do with the fact that, as a political philosophy for running a state and its economic system, it doesn't work.  And it doesn't "not work" because of the bloodiness of the revolution or the iron-fistedness of the State --- it doesn't work because it rewards sloth and punishes productivity and innovativeness. (And the iron-fistedness of the state becomes necessary because it doesn't work!)

It is inherent in human nature to want to better one's lot in life.  Generally speaking, when bettering one's lot in life while following rules that keep you from confiscating from others -- you better others' lives as well.  You produce.  "Money", in reality, is a representation of production. (A portable proxy, if you will.)  The more you produce as a nation, the wealthier your nation is ... the better you do.  The less incentive to produce, the less will be produced.  The poorer your country will be.

So what you end up with is lower production, and confiscation from the productive to redistribute to the non-productive.
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
Sounds great, on the surface, but it ain't human (or animal) nature.  On top of that, who decides what your abilities are, and who decides what someone's needs are?   And if I "need" more because I'm not performing up to my ability ... how does that get resolved?

By force.

That's right.  The state must either force me to work, or force someone else to support me.  If neither really works, then everybody gets poorer.   This will not stop the state from continuing to use force, though, and it will use more and more of it as time goes on in more and more desperate attempts to keep control.  This happens eventually every time.  It is inevitible, because of the nature of what we are, and that is homo sapiens.  It gets bloody one way or the other, because at some point someone's going to rebel against being used.

We know that.  We don't want to go there.  Which is why we resist.   If we resist too much for their liking when they have enough power, we will be liquidated (too many of us to imprison).   That's the way they roll.   If they don't have enough power, they will be subdued and discredited when we win.  The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. If we do not resist and let it happen, eventually the iron fist of the state will, as I discussed above, become tyrannically oppressive at some point anyway.  It has to.

Because state socialism is incompatible with human nature.  Human compassion works well at the level of the free individual, where one is free to decide when, to whom, and how much, and nobody is coerced into anything else.

Update: I have since edited up a video to go with this post. It just barely scratches the surface.

12 comments:

mkfreeberg said...

This is by far the best written work I have ever seen that would be fitting as a "Tea Party Manifesto." The best, far and away -- and I have read a lot.

And no I'm not just saying that because the first paragraph links back to me. :D

philmon said...

Thanks, that means a lot coming from you.

Gavin said...

Very well put. You need to flag this one, Philmon, for future reference. The majority of redistribution happens in exactly the opposite direction that they say it will. The Statist in charge get the lion's share of the redistributed wealth as a "just compensation" for their salvation of us producing peasants.

Cylar said...

Exactly. And just since you were wondering, Phil, I don't have any thought that you were referring to fascism or any of its cousins as "right wing." It's clear you're far above that kind of primitive thinking.

I just don't understand why more people cannot see this. It ought to be obvious, intuitive even. Even with the best of intentions, government is inherently an evil institution. It logically follows that the stronger it gets, the more evil it becomes. The only time it functions as intended, is when it is small and constrained within strict boundaries.

I don't doubt that many of Barack Obama's supporters are genuinely well-intentioned people (a courtesy most of them don't offer to US), but they're so ignorant and misguided as to defy description.

philmon said...

I was watching Glen Reynolds, Dr. Helen (I think she's his wife?) and Andrew Breitbart, the former two interviewing the latter, and some interesting things came out of it.

One of which is Scottsman Ian Mitchell ... who was lead singer for the Bay City Rollers, is apparently a tea partier. Another is Lech Walesa is stumping in Illinois for a tea party candidate (I think to take "Big O's old seat") --

Listen to what Lech has to say.

One thing Breitbart says when Glen asks him about the "Racist" or "*-ist" or "*-ism" charges and how he's handling them, he says keep walking straight toward them and challenge them. Challenge them to come up with credible evidence.

They don't know how to handle it. It's been a show stopper until just recently.

I like it.

Here's the link to that interview. It's about 20 minutes.

BTW, I've been to a conference there. Nice place!

Oh -- and cylarz ... I just wanted to make double sure, that's all.

Kevin said...

Excellent, and linked. I think I just spent 10,500 words (about 70% of them Thomas Sowell's) making pretty much this point last week.

Anonymous said...

but it ain't human (or animal) nature

Actually, it is in the nature of bees and other hive insects: they do the work they're supposed to do, and get the shelter and nourishment they need from the hive.

Last time I looked, though, we (humans) ain't bees...

philmon said...

Well Kevin, I'm a big fan of Sowell's.

Thanks for the pat on the back, and the link.

philmon said...

Gavin sent me this... I think it's an email that's been going around for a while. Likely an Urban Legend, but ... it illustrates the above rather well. So let's call it an "Urban Parable":

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked & that no one would be poor & no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan". All grades would be averaged & everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail & no one would receive an A...

After the first test, the grades were averaged & everyone got a B.
The students who studied hard were upset & the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less & the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D!

No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame & name-calling all resulted in hard feelings & no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, & the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Greg Hunt said...

It's been my opinion that devout Socialists are by nature anti-human. They've already found the "perfect" system, but have come to grudgingly accept that humans are too imperfect to live within that system. Being religiously devoted to Socialism, they cannot go back, and so conclude that humanity is too stupid and evil to know what's good for them.... which just furthers their own argument that Socialism should be forced upon us... "for our own good". In the end, the only way to make Socialism work is to get rid of all the humans.

Anybody else notice all the dystopian "end of humanity" movies coming out of Hollywood recently?

philmon said...

Why yes, yes I have.

Anonymous said...

I've noticed that too. But most of those films were written, greenlighted and produced during the Bush years, when left-wing Hollywood was spending most of the time wetting its drawers over Republicans, absolutely sure that conservatives were going to bring about the end of the world. Many of these films reflect that sense of lefty angst.

So then they turn around and vote in an administration that actually seems primed to destroy our society.

Yes, I see the irony. Perhaps I'd find it all more amusing if I weren't so concerned about the kind of world my niece will grow up in.