![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Oh, really?
Quote from an article I read today:
Conservatives are living fossils, trapped in a time when lying was considered a bad thing, taking other people’s property was a sin, spending money that doesn’t exist was a self-destructive folly, and believing you could “build that” was a sign of adulthood.
Today’s liberals —
(Oh, excuse me, they call themselves ‘progressives’ now, since decades of bad policy turned ‘liberal’ into an insult … which is funny, since the use of ‘liberal’ came about precisely because the Progressives of the early 20th century gave the label such a bad name.)
— today’s ‘progressives’ are so far advanced now beyond such antiquated notions.
no subject
But I think the point the author was making wasn't so much about individual progressive politicians who lie, but about progressivism as a whole. The "Homo Cathodicus" creature he defines calls to mind Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
American Progressivism has its modern roots in the philosophies of (vile, in my own estimate) intellectuals like Woodrow Wilson. He sought to overthrow Madison's ideal of a multi-polar, individualistic republic with a decentralized distibution of power due to many competing interests and institutions. Wilson imagined a different sort of republic, much more in line with the same 20th century ideologies that fueled Naziism and Communism -- that is a highly centralized and concentrated pyramidal power structure. In this republic, the economic and social engines would be steered by various "experts" (unelected regulatory bodies, blue ribbon commissions, czars, etc) whose authority would in turn be preserved by several highly invested and mutually dependent voting blocs (namely labor unions and trade guilds, the chronically impoverished, and -- eventually -- aggrieved social and ethnic groups and large, unwieldy financial institutions and trusts). It's a demographic game based on cobbling together enough interest groups to maintain a majority, implementing a de-facto command economy via an ever-expanding tax-and-regulatory regime, then delegating the decisions of that economy to politically-aligned experts who will judge every political whim to be a paradigm of efficiency and morality (see Soviet Union). This is the essence of progressivism today. All of the cultural parasites of progressivism (you mentioned Al Sharpton as one, but there are of course many others) are helpful mainly in that their lies antagonize and demoralize people most likely to stand in the way of the progressive juggernaut, but they aren't the main rank-and-file charged with carrying out the plan.
None of participants in this plan actually need to be "liars" themselves, let alone believe that there's isn't anything wrong with being dishonest. I would say that the vast majority of progressives don't think they are being lied to by their leaders. I'd guess Many of them don't think very much at all about the economic fallacy at the heart of the command economy -- that governments know how to spend wealth better than the people who created it -- and few would be expected to, since so far the illusion of lots of persistent common wealth has held up. As bad a spot as we are in economically, and as deep a pit of debt we've dug, we have yet to feel the pains that past failed nation-states and empires have felt (the food and energy shortages, the the total breakdown of civil authority, the riots etc).
This is due to many tactics, such as quantitative easing, that will actually make the blow much harder when it finally arrives. I've laughed my ass off at the current sequestration nonsense being bandied about. The notion that $85 billion in cuts out of a bloated whale of a $4 trillion dollar budget will trigger Armageddon? Now THAT is a lie so outrageous there isn't a pant leg not on fire in Washington D.C. -- and that includes the Repubs who are playing into the political melodrama in order to jockey for position internally.
And of course, the REALLY BIG LIE goes even deeper than that, and that's the position held by almost all Democrats these days (plus many, many more Republican's than their party leadership would like to admit): whatever size the current government Leviathan is, that's the ideal size for it, and any cuts at all are therefore greedy and evil. Maybe scores of progressive voters foolishly believe that lie, but that's the nature of lying itself: you lie in order to deceive people.
no subject
The thing is, unlike here in Europe, where we all grumble about the waste of the European Parliament, on how our elected leaders are selling our freedoms and wealth off just so they can get that seat on the board or get re-elected, the people of the United States can do something about it.
The current run of anti-gun laws is the focal point. Unlike the US we've been disarmed and all we can do is grumble but keep on paying, giving our hard-earned cash to those holding up their hands and demanding their 'fair share'. In the US, however, people are fighting back. Companies are fighting back. They vote with their pocketbooks. For instance, MagPul has announced that it will leave the state it's in if the anti-gun bill the state government is drafting gets made into law. It will take 600 jobs plus eightyfive million dollars worth of tax revenue with it. Other companies have stated they won't be selling their products to New York law enforcement since they won't be able to sell them to the lawful citizens.
Boehner seems to be gathering a group of congressmen and representatives behind a bill that will stop all payments to congress if they don't actually start working on the economic problems the country has. States are reasserting their independence, something they had given away for decades. Local law enforcement is plainly stating its opposition towards Federal Edicts.
I know big business is in bed with both sides, paying good money to have it their way but when the people themselves start to say "Enough" in the USA? Things will be happening. I can't say which way it will change but I can say that it will happen. And I hope it won't but I think it will be a second revolution, just as big and bad as the first one. The lines are being drawn. The government is using their media arm like a club. Watching MSNBC is like watching scenes from the movie 'V'. The US government has become that totalitarian machine.
no subject
It seems to me that the main political goal of the current gun mania is to nip at the heels of the gun lobby in order to satisfy a few interest groups and give off the illusion of big, powerful government action. Banning the AR-15 "assault rifle" won't move the needle one micrometer on gun murders in this country at all, but that was never the point. I don't doubt there are sincere Democrats who believe that it will, but I think that's because they cling to certain unexamined, false premises, and because they often let their emotions overpower logic when it comes to policy.
I can't speak to Europe's political situation, when it comes to guns. I know that their gun laws vary from country to country, but their larger continental problem seems to be linked more closely to all those big bets they made on post-war communal entitlements, without regard to the individuals whose personal ambitions and work ethics make those entitlements possible. It's hard for freedom to flower when the dreams of the current generation are yoked to the debts and excesses of the previous one.
(OTOH, I think that Europe's Sick Man is swiftly becoming America's, these days, so I've been paying much closer attention to their woes in recent years.)