Quote of the day - Mark Steyn - paying for socialism

There aren't enough of us to pay for all this – for government health care, government banks, government mortgages, government automobiles, government horses, government burros, for cap-and-trade, for stimulating phony-baloney nonjobs like Deputy Executive Associated Assistant Stimulus Resources Manager on the Stimulus Co-ordination & Compliance Commission.

Mark Steyn - July 17, 2009

Socialism and union control; On the Waterfront

Here is a three (3) minute clip from the movie, "On the Waterfront." This clip is 55 years old, but it shows our future.

In this clip, the union boss hands out small chips to the dockworkers. Having a chip allows the worker to work for that day and collect a paycheck. Those workers who have an "in" with the union leadership get a chip. The others either receive nothing or must fight each other for the remaining chips while the union bosses watch and laugh.

Either give kickbacks to the union bosses or don't work. A classic example of "pay to play."

The priest observes the situation with the sister of a dockworker who was recently murdered by the union/mob so he could not testify about union/mob activity on the docks. At one point, she intervenes to help her father obtain a chip.



This is how health care, automobile jobs and other perks of socialism will soon be handed out. These conditions will prevail in any industry that is dominated by government/unions. It is already beginning to happen. Note the Chrysler dealers that were terminated solely because they had not donated money to Obama.

Imagine being seriously ill and having to fight this way for the few health resources that might remain in our soon-to-be socialized medical system.
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Michelle Malkin posts a more specific video about the future of socialized health care.

Quote of the day - Dick Morris - Obama War on Prosperity

President Lyndon Johnson’s administration was known for his War on Poverty. President Obama’s will become notable for his War on Prosperity.

Dick Morris - 3/3/09

America's future under Obama; retirement funds; Argentina; Cristina Kirchner

The following item grabbed my attention at Asia Times:

Argentina is now effectively broke, and the government of Cristina Kirchner has expropriated the country's private pension plans to obtain cash.

Further research revealed this. Does anyone really think that Obama won't try to do the same thing? Even if he does not do this, he will lay the groundwork for a successor who will find it that much easier to seize our IRA's and 401(k)'s.

Cristina Kirchner

Baby Boomer comeuppance; Richard Berry; American Thinker; Crash of 2008

American Thinker has posted an essay detailing how the baby boomer values led to the crash we have experienced over the past few years (most sharply in the past few weeks):

We are seeing in the Wall Street implosion the inevitable result of the Boomer Elite outlook and the behavior it spawned. Storied investment banks were being run on 40 to 1 leverage. Fancy new securities were designed and widely disseminated whose terms are opaque even to highly knowledgeable and experienced hands. Mortgage securitization techniques were developed which, our bettors assured us, would magically spread risk and thus stabilize the financial system. However, simultaneously with these brilliant innovations, lenders were being forced -- by Boomer Elite congressmen with an aching love of the poor and oppressed unique to themselves -- to loan to uncreditworthy borrowers at subprime rates and without adequate documentation. These loans, packaged into securities together with standard, performing loans, rendered unknowable the value of the securities, leading to mandatory write downs and drastic capital impairment or outright insolvency for many very large firms. Given the high degree of integration of the international financial system, critical destabilization was the real result of this confluence of Master of the Universe genius and Boomer Elite turpitude.

The next time you hear or see:

• a TV program extol the virtues of the 60's generation and how they stopped the war in Vietnam;
• a speaker refer to Vietnam as the "crucible of a generation";
• 60's music referred to as idealistic and the catalyst for peace and love, etc.;
• John Lennon referred to as the voice (or the conscience or whatever) of a generation;
• commercials or news accounts celebrating the empowerment of the baby boomers as they grow older;
• any other whitewash of the generation that has done so much damage;

click on this American Thinker article and remember the price we pay for our indulgence in this 40 year fantasy.

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran [socialism, Francois Mitterand]

I recall a news item about an indignant middle-
class Frenchwoman some years ago, during the presidency
of the Socialist Francois Mitterand. "Mitterand told us
he was going to tax the rich," she complained. "Now he
tells us that we are the rich!" It's called the
"slippery slope," madame. If you set fire to your
neighbor's house, the flames may spread to your own home.
And once you support violations of your neighbor's
rights, your own rights may become the next target.

Joe Sobran

The end of Hillary's Potemkin village

On January 7th, I speculated on the possibility of Hillary withdrawing from the race based on reports from insiders. Those stories were premature, but only by a little more than a month.

It appears now that Hillary cannot win the nomination. Commenters at Politico.com have done the math. Even if she wins PA, Texas and Ohio, she will not have the necessary delegate total to win the nomination, unless she maneuvers some convention trick that will leave the party in disarray. The piling on has begun. Writers are finally acknowledging the obvious. James Carville has sounded a pessimistic note about her chances.
Tonight, Drudge posts an advance excerpt from the New York Times' Thursday edition:

NYT THURSDAY: Clinton's advisers acknowledged it would be difficult to catch up in race for pledged delegates even if she succeeded in winning 3 states on which she is most pinning her hopes: Ohio and Texas in March and Pennsylvania in April. Dem party's rules would be decided obstacle in efforts to catch up to Obama before voting phase of nominating process ends later in spring... Developing...

These type of statements are not made unless the candidate is doomed. Hillary can see the handwriting on the wall too. My prediction is that Hillary will not wait for the convention. Rather than endure months of defeat and piling on, Hillary will withdraw from the race prior to the convention. The Pennsylvania primary, even if Hillary has not withdrawn by that point, will be an anti-climax. I will go out on a limb and predict that Hillary will withdraw prior to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. Either the smaller primaries will outweigh Hillary's gains in Ohio and Texas, or Hillary will lose one of those big states.

[Of course all of this analysis depends on MSM/DNC reports and insiders.]

When the end comes, there will be endless discussion of why her campaign failed, with endless explanations focusing on white noise. The real question is not why Hillary's campaign failed, but why it ever seemed real in the first place. Hillary is one big nothing. She has no accomplishments. She is devoted to one thing -- her own advancement and ambition. If she were a man with no connection to Bill Clinton, she would be indistinguishable from ordinary bureacrat wannabes. Her candidacy and career have been entirely dependent on MSM/DNC sycophancy. She has turned herself into a Potemkin village.

Peg Noonan touched upon this idea in December, but only in relation to this campaign instead of Hillary's entire life:

This thought occurs that Hillary Clinton's entire campaign is, and always was, a Potemkin village, a giant head fake, a haughty facade hollow at the core. That she is disorganized on the ground in Iowa, taken aback by a challenge to her invincibility, that she doesn't actually have an A team, that her advisers have always been chosen more for proven loyalty than talent, that her supporters don't feel deep affection for her. That she's scrambling chaotically to catch up, with surrogates saying scuzzy things about Barack Obama and drug use, and her following up with apologies that will, as always, keep the story alive. That her guru-pollster, the almost universally disliked Mark Penn, has, according to Newsday, become the focus of charges that he has "mistakenly run Clinton as a de facto incumbent" and that the top officials on the campaign have never had a real understanding of Iowa.

Peg Noonan was right, but not just about Iowa. The above paragraph is a microcosm of who Hillary is. Hillary spent her entire public life in a series of simultaneous evasions/publicity stunts. If the term "evasions/publicity stunts" seems like a contradiction, consider the following :

- In 1994, she made headlines because she wore pink to a Friday afternoon press conference timed to avoid tough questions on Whitewater.
- Ten years ago almost to the day, she created the label "vast right wing conspiracy" before a fawning Matt Lauer who could do no more than toss her softballs.
- In 1993, she appeared in a fashion magazine photo shoot while her health care task force attempted to dispose of our freedoms in secret.
- She placed her name on a large autobiography that reaped great publicity while saying nothing of substance [the innocuousness of which was later used against her when she attempted to claim credit for accomplishments that were not mentioned therein].
- Hillary's autobiography sold many copies while saying nothing, at the same time that her actions more closely reflected the plans touched on in the college thesis that she tried to hide for so many years.
- She notoriously decried the "politics of personal destruction" while plotting in secret to destroy enemies.

This is not simply a list of scandals - although she has plenty of those in her background. Hillary's public life has been a series of empty gestures, spin and window dressing, all of which exist side-by-side with something Hillary needed to evade. She has spent her life evading and hiding. She gives new meaning to the phrase "hidden in plain sight." Few past presidential candidates have been so well known yet so little understood.

Years from now, we may wonder how she got so close to the seat of power. Her opponents may wonder what they were so afraid of for so long. In fact, her power existed purely as a projection of MSM/DNC spin and the self-fulfilling prophecy of polls. It is only in this age where so many wait to be told what to think that a Hillary could appear to prosper for so long. Only after decades of the welfare state could a large portion of the population be rendered so pliant that a candidacy based on smoke and mirrors would seem viable.

This is what socialism is really all about. Socialism is not merely an economic theory or a dictatorial type of government. Socialism implies the remaking of the individual in a way that wipes out his very individuality. Socialism prevents us from acting or thinking without the sanction of the crowd. Socialism takes the most private activities and makes a public spectacle out of them. The sexual revolution is one of socialism's greatest accomplishments. Sex has been taken out of the privacy of one's bedroom and made into a public commodity, where monogamy is treated as old-fashioned and "free love" has reshaped our lives. In the same way, the choice of candidates has been socialized. Choice, itself, has become a communal process. Polls could not retain their power to create bandwagon effects in a nonsocialized society. "Focus groups" instead of "focus individuals" are candidates' tools of choice. It is not merely our doctors that the left wants to socialize - it is our minds.

Hillary is not the real villain here. It is our own tendency to support the inevitable winner that is the villain. It is our own desire to gravitate toward power - or the appearance of power - that is to blame. Rather than analyze Hillary's debate strategy, we should remember every time we asked "can he/she win?" instead of "what does the candidate believe?".

It is our own willingness to follow a trend that encourages those who would claim ownership of that trend. In the end, we can see that Hillary was foisted upon us by those who took advantage of our own "follow-the-leader" mentality. If we ever learn that we can say "no" without wondering whether others are saying "no" too, we will be immune to the Hillary's of the world.

It took 16 years for us to acknowledge that the emporer has no clothes. We will not have that much time when the next "Hillary" comes along.

Bobby Fischer; Ayn Rand; An Open Letter to Boris Spassky

The world noted the death of Bobby Fischer two days ago. As you may remember, Fischer was the mercurial chess champion that defeated the Russian champion, Boris Spassky, in the match of the century in 1972.




















I cannot think of Bobby Fischer without thinking of an article Ayn Rand wrote shortly after the match. She titled her article "An Open Letter to Boris Spassky." The article barely mentioned Fischer, but for me the article and all that implies about collectivism, individualism, freedom and the future of the western world far outweighs anything else related to Spassky, Fischer or the famous chess match.

Fischer and Spassky in 1972














The article first appeared in Ayn Rand's newsletter and was later republished in Rand's book, "Philosophy: Who Needs It." In this article, Rand applied the basic principles of communism/collectivism/socialism to chess. She asked Spassky if he could play the game if he had to play by the collectivist rules. In fact, these simple questions point out the error in much of the assumptions that underlie not only communism, but the entire altruistic, egalitarian unspoken creed that dominates our life in today's leftist west.

Judge for yourself:

· Would you be able to play if, at a crucial moment – when, after hours of brain-wrenching effort, you had succeeded in cornering your opponent – an unknown, arbitrary power suddenly changed the rules of the game in his favor, allowing, say, his bishops to move like queens? You would not be able to continue? Yet out in the living world, this is the law of your country – and this is the condition in which your countrymen are expected, not to play, but to live.

· Would you be able to play if the rules of chess were updated to conform to a dialectic reality, in which opposites merge - so that, at a crucial moment, your queen turns suddenly from White to Black, becoming the queen of your opponent, and then turned Gray, belonging to both of you? You would not be able to continue? Yet in the living world, this is the view of reality your countrymen are taught to accept, to absorb, and to live by.

· Would you be able to play if you had to play by teamwork – i.e., if you were forbidden to think or act alone and had to play not with a group of advisers, but with a team that determined your every move by vote? Since, as champion, you would be the best mind among them, how much time and effort would you have to spend persuading the team that your strategy is the best? Would you be likely to succeed? And what would you do if some pragmatist, range-of-the-moment mentalities voted to grab an opponent’s knight at the price of a checkmate to you three moves later? You would not be able to continue? Yet in the living world, this is the theoretical idea of your country, and this is the method by which it proposes to deal (someday) with scientific research, industrial production, and every other kind of activity required for man’s survival.

· Would you be able to play if the cumbersome mechanism of teamwork were streamlined, and your moves were dictated simply by a man standing behind you, with a gun pressed to your back – a man who would not explain or argue, his gun being his only argument and sole qualification? You would not be able to start, let alone continue, playing? Yet in the living world, this is the practical policy under which men live - and die - in your country.

· Would you be able to play – or to enjoy the professional understanding, interest and acclaim of an international chess federation – if the rules of the game were splintered, and you played by “proletarian” rules while your opponent played by “bourgeois” rules? Would you say that such “polyrulism” is more preposterous than polylogism? Yet in the living world, your country professes to seek global harmony and understanding, while proclaiming that she follows “proletarian” logic and that others follow “bourgeois” logic or “Aryan” logic, or “third-world” logic, etc.

· Would you be able to play if the rules of the game remained as they are at present, with one exception: that the pawns were declared to be the most valuable and nonexpendable pieces (since they may symbolize the masses) which had to be protected at the price of sacrificing the more efficacious pieces (the individuals)? You might claim a draw on the answer to the this one – since it is not only your country, but the whole living world that accepts this sort of rule in morality.

· Would you care to play, if the rules of the game remained unchanged, but the distribution of rewards were altered in accordance with egalitarian principles: if the prizes, the honors, the fame were given not to the winner, but to the loser – if winning were regarded as a symptom of selfishness, and the winner were penalized for the crime of possessing a superior intelligence, the penalty consisting in suspension for a year, in order to give others a chance? And would you and your opponent try playing not to win, but to lose? What would this do to your mind?

You do not have to answer me, Comrade. You are not free to speak or even to think of such questions – and I know the answers. No, you would not be able to play under any of the conditions listed above. It is to escape this category of phenomena that you fled into the world of chess.

From Chapter 6 of "Philosophy: Who Needs It."

The myopic reader would conclude only that we shouldn't run chess according to the rules of communism - but would miss the bigger picture. We see the folly of undercutting individual effort, reward, achievement, strategy, etc. when it comes to chess or other games, but we fail to see that the same lesson applies to everything else. At the same time we honor chess champions like Fischer and Spassky, we allow politicians to tell us how they are going to apply Ayn Rand's invented nightmare scenarios to health care and other major components of the economy. While Rand's questions might seem ridiculous, we will find ourselves, more and more, answering her questions with regard to our own medical choices, employment decisions, business matters, etc.

Rand's little philosophy book has enjoyed numerous editions over the years:

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

The story of the Western world since 1945 is that, invited to choose between freedom and government ‘security,’ large numbers of people vote to dump freedom – the freedom to make your own decisions about health care, education, property rights, seat belts and a ton of other stuff.

Mark Steyn