Speak up, before you lose the right
Bookworm on Mar 21 2009 at 4:00 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
Drudge’s latest headline is to the effect that Obama wishes to exert ever tighter controls over American businesses by having the government establish limits on salaries. (Now we know why he was whipping up AIG hysteria, don’t we?)
Obama is busy creating the slippery socialist slope and, unless we put the brakes on, we’ll slide down too far to stop. April 15 is going to be a day of nationwide tax day tea parties. Please check out this site to find out information about a tea party near you.
Cross-posted at Right Wing News
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Speak up, before you lose the right…
Drudge’s latest headline is to the effect that Obama wishes to exert ever tighter controls over American businesses by having the government establish limits on salaries. (Now we know why he was whipping up AIG hysteria, don’t we?) Obama is……
Out of the mouths of babes…
My 9 year old son was looking at his book about fighter planes through history. That triggered this question and answer session: Son: Why were the Germans so bad? Me: Humans have always fought. It’s part of the human condition…….
Here is a link to the full story. (This link does not require subscription.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/politics/22regulate.html?ref=business
The government seeks more and more power. It is ravenous. And we, as a People, seem completely ready to cede our liberty completely over to the government. Piece by piece by piece, and always with “the best of intentions”.
We used to believe in limited government. It appears we live now in the Age Of Limitless Government. How long before YOUR life becomes completely regulated? At times like this I look at my country and I don’t even recognize it anymore. I form a conception of today’s “We Americans”, and I am not sure what I see anymore. I am not sure I like what I see anymore.
The rebirth of Freedom, of Liberty, shall surely occur someday. I am not convinced that the rebirth will happen here. The sadness of that thought, if I allow it to truly penetrate, is overwhelming.
April 15th could be a significant Protest Day. Something is on the move out there. Can you feel it? I hope it’s not too late.
I’m just stunned. I can’t believe Obama and the Democrats are now moving to dictate executive pay in companies that aren’t even receiving government money.
It’s creepy. All of this is just creepy.
And I agree with you, Mike. There are moments I don’t even recognize my own country.
There are two things in recent politics that have done more than just annoy me, but have made me willing to engage in whatever way necessary to stop them…
The first was Huckabee’s idea that the US should be an Islamic state (or something that sounded just like it).
The second was when Barney Frank and Geithner, and now Obama, started talking about government control of all salaries.
Both concepts scare me to the core and radicalize me. And I’m usually not that kind of person at all.
I can’t help but wonder if your average American finds it . . . weird . . . that Congress AND the President are spending so much time talking about what private citizens get paid.
It’s bizarre.
It’s rather astonishing that Bernanke could advocate control of executive salaries “at big important companies because those salaries could have a destabilizing effect on the economy.” (I’m paraphrasing slightly)
And at the same time he doesn’t advocate tighter controls on Congress and the White House due to their destabilizing effects on the economy.
Then again, we’re talking about a guy living in The Darkness Known As Washington D.C., so actually it is not astonishing at all.
Anyone hoping that Bernanke might be a voice of reason in the wilderness… give that hope up. (Just as we’ve had to give up hope that Michael Steele might be a voice of reason who might restore the GOP’s fortunes. Not gonna happen.) I keep hoping there might be one voice in Washington D.C. that speaks anything I recognize as Truth, but all I keep hearing is Pandering. From both sides. Perhaps expecting Truth from any Politician is expecting far too much.
Just how many “solid conservatives” voted to tax the AIG bonuses at 90%? A despairingly large amount. As I’ve said in other comments recently, we need new leadership. The problem IS your congresscritter. The problem IS my congresscritter. The problem is NOT just other peoples’ congresscritters. Vote them all out. Even the almost-good ones have been poisoned and tainted by D.C. Even those who might be considered decent have been too quiet for too long in the face of infamy and corruption. They can’t be effective even if they want to be effective. Vote them all out.
We need new leadership for the conservative revolution. I hate to say that because my congressman, Michael Burgess, seems actually quite OK. But even if he’s a good one, all the good ones have been corrupted as well. They can’t be effective; they’ve been a part of the problem for far, far too long. They must all leave.
Perhaps the cold, hard truth is anti-matter itself to any thing or any person near Washington D.C. Anyone who opens their mouth and even begins to speak cold, hard truths is instantly swallowed up in an explosion, leaving only drifts of smoke to waft away into D.C.’s cherry blossoms.
Deana: I can’t help but wonder if your average American finds it . . . weird . . . that Congress AND the President are spending so much time talking about what private citizens get paid.
I think it’s based on an honest (and totally wrong) belief that everything is based on a “pie”. There is this economic pie, and if CEOs are getting a big piece of the pie, then it reduces how much of the pie everyone else gets. So CEOs are effectively “stealing” this money from the little people.
Also, they believe the radical concept that for the last 8+ years, all rich people have been “stealing” all their money from everyone else, and that’s where the economic boom came from.
People who believe in this static pie don’t understand that the function of business is to create wealth, thereby increasing the size of the pie so everyone has access to more.
My standard response to people who say this free market stuff has all been a sham and we’re right back to the 1930s is: Please send my your iPod, Xbox, plasma TV, high-quality car, medical drugs, and access to cheap food. Then you can get a bit of the true 1930s experience, back when the pie was a fraction of the size it is today…
Liberals prior to the 60′s would have scoffed at this static-pie (aka zero sum game) mindset; liberals since the 60′s seem quite ready to remain stuck in it.
I just know that the standard response of Today’s Liberal to your argument, Ron, is that the only reason we appear to be wealthier today than in the past is because we’ve exploited implicit or potential value present in the Earth’s resources, and created explicit wealth from those resources.
In other words, the Earth is a closed zero-sum-game (to them) when it comes to value or wealth.
This is most easily refuted when I use my time to assemble or collect existing objects into an arrangement and sell the arrangement.
Today’s Liberal could come back with: “Well, you used your energy to do that, which required you to eat food. This means you stole a resource from Mother Earth. Making the arrangement moved implicit value to explicit value.”
To which you reply: “Instead of creating the arrangement and selling it, I could simply have jogged in place instead to consume the same amount of energy, and produced nothing of value. Creating the arrangement and jogging used that same food; one produced value, the other did not. It’s not a zero sum game.”
But at some point along this chain, Today’s Liberal will actually just phase out – you’ll actually see them avert their gaze from you, or their pupils will even unfocus – and you’ll know they’ve stopped listening. Because it doesn’t fit their paradigm, and can’t be allowed to penetrate. And that’s just a simple case!
—–
The scariest part of the rapidly expanding Obama Redistribution Schemes is that government redistribution is a zero sum game. Or worse, because the government has to expand to perform the redistribution, so it’s a negative sum game.
As Ayn Rand explained brilliantly in Atlas Shrugged (via the plot-lines surrounding Twentieth Century Motors) when you’re subject to redistribution schemes, suddenly you start resenting what other people are getting. Envy and hatred and bitterness rise. All the nobler human sentiments decline. Society – your community! – becomes base and more depraved.
Accounts of Governor Bradford’s early Pilgrim economics, when they tried socialism and redistribution, also show this clearly. (The colony was using a classic case of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”.) The colony’s community was in sharp decline; not to mention the rise of starvation and misery. The first Thanksgiving occurred in response when the colony abolished this socialism and redistribution.
[...] Bookworm writes, “Obama is busy creating the slippery socialist slope,” and the NY Times provides the [...]
Comrade Obama Seeks More Oversight Over Executive Pay…
As Bookworm writes, “Obama is busy creating the slippery socialist slope,” and the NY Times provides the red meat for the capitalist hating Democrat Base The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall…..
This is all about the control of power, wealth, and status. People who obtain these things from politics and from educational credentials resent the fact that there is an alternative ladder for obtaining wealth. Very similar to the traditional attitude of a landed nobility toward those who are “in trade.”
If the Obama wing of the Democratic Party gets its way, the only roads to serious wealth will be (a)electoral politics, and (b)Ivy-league graduate degree. (There may be a few exceptions for celebrities in sports and media)
Very similar to the traditional attitude of a landed nobility toward those who are “in trade.”
An astute observation.
There’s a simple name for it …
It’s called _COMMUNISM_.
A little off topic, but a small point. Some time back I advocated that we drop the label “Liberal” from our vocabulary. I assumed at the time that the totally misleading term “Progressive”, now preferred by Leftists, had never crossed our lips in that context.
I do not view the modern power-grabbing, nanny state leftist as liberal in any sense. The appropriate term in my opinion is “Statist”.
I am happy to say that the great Mark Levin is using the term Statist on his radio show. I will be curious to see if that is the construct that is used in his latest book–which hits the market within the next day or so.
I encourage all conservatives to consider using this term; as it more closely defines what we are dealing with.
Those who want all power vested in the government are Statists. The people now in control of our government are Statists, and if we do not oppose them by every means possible they will succeed in their intent.
PS
Clearly, Communists, Nazis and Facists had one common attribute. They were all Statists.
All of the above comments are dead-on: fights over control over power, wealth and status; misconceived metaphors about the economic pie, etc.
Re Ronald Haydon’s point that
“Both concepts [ie sharia govt and govt control of salaries] scare me to the core and radicalize me. And I’m usually not that kind of person at all.”
I agree; I feel the same way.
For the first time in my life, I am thinking of joining a demonstration — the “tea party” — and as a personal aside, I can’t tell you how utterly distasteful and foreign the idea of joining a movement feels to me as a rational individual. Congregations are for church and temple; I don’t like mass political rallies.
However.
The situation is alarming. As one of the usually lion-hearted guys at Powerline wrote, “I am depressed because the president of the United States is a fool who will immiserate us, render us wards of the state and lose us our life and liberty to those who understand what they are about. ”
Quite. Let’s acknowledge the reality of the situation and our fears; but let’s not confuse trends with inevitability.
The question is how best to organize principled resistance. I can’t believe that most Americans are so un-American as to take this lying down. Maybe it’s only a matter of faith on my part, but to counteract this tendency towards acedia and despair, I will quote the modern patron saint of courage and liberty:
“Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.
I reckon we are at stage 2 1/2. Victory is unsure and will be costly; I’m not sure about the odds. But we can always do what is right!
Oldflyer, you are not off-point in the least! You’ve encapsulated the difference in one word. The root meaning of “liberal” is of course “freedom”.
“Statist” is a true description of those people.
Liberalism, based on the idea of individual liberty as a governing principle, has an honorable history. It has been sullied, if not corrupted, by people who are more properly called statists, or collectivists, or luddites, or just plain jerks. I’ve felt for a while we are reaching a point where are political language no longer fits; it obscures and deflects more than clarifies. What are conservatives trying to “conserve” except basic liberal values of limited government and individual liberty? What is “liberal” or “progressive” about a vast expansion of government, an increase of bureaucracy (with a resultant increase of efficiency), and piling on of taxes? I get irritated hearing people speak of right and left too: why should politics in the 21st century be calibrated on the basis of where Frenchmen sat their derriers in the 18th?
The people have forgotten what liberty is. Thus they see no contradiction between calling wanna be tyrants in the Democrat party “liberals”, the people advocating liberty.
Instead, people are trained to believe that America has had all the worst actions in our history. Thus conservatives, people who wish to conserve our history, are evil for they wish to keep all the bad things and prevent all the good New Things coming down the pipe.
I too agree that Statist is the best term to describe our ideological opponents. Is there a different “best term” than we’ve been using, for us?
Book ran a great post a few months back in which she chose the word “Statist” as well. Any chance of bumping that post up to the top again, Book?
To MikeD’s point, the greatest wealth-creating resource is that which exists between our ears. However, the Obamanation is working hard to erase all incentives to apply that resource toward wealth creation.
It really is about capturing a fixed “pie” and, unfortunately, we’re out of time to enforce basic economics education in the classroom that could have changed that pre-medieval mindset. So, unfortunately, vast segments of the lumpen proletariat will not ever get it. However, thanks to their ignorance, they may yet get to experience it – a shrinking “pie” society, that is.
Don’t call them “liberals” because (a)they aren’t, and (b)there are many self-defined liberals, particularly older ones, to whom we want to appeal and detach from the moonbattery.
I think the best thing to call them is “progressives,” always with the quotation marks, because that’s what they call themselves. “Statist” may be accurate, but it’s very hard to get a whole new vocabulary broadly adopted.
One way to start getting statist into the vocabulary is to consistently accompany the word “progressive” with it. Thus: “As my ‘progressive’ (statist) friends are fond of saying…”
Another is to coin the accompanying phrase, “state supremacist” to answer Lenin’s famous “Who whom?” question: Who has the power to do what to whom? For a statist/state supremacist, it is the state that has the power to do what it wants to the individual, not the other way around.
“State Supremacist” – I like that…it combines a factual statement “Statist” with a modifier that is also a pejorative, “Supremacist”. It turns the Left’s language against itself. Remember Alinsky – “use their own rules against them”.