The presidency of Barack Obama has established once and for all that modern liberalism is now the stupid party. Very little of liberal thought these days represents anything fresh or new, but rather comprises what Lionel Trilling once reduced conservatism to: “irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.” Now it is liberal ideas that young in the 19th century today stumble around like zombies in the liberal mind, mindlessly repeating hoary clichés of the sort Jonah Goldberg documents in his new book.
Obama’s presidency and reelection campaign have already produced an abundance of examples. Take the looming fiscal crisis of unfunded social welfare entitlements, run-away federal spending, and accelerating debt and deficits. Even with the monitory example of a rapidly disintegrating Europe before our eyes, the Democrats still can’t do the math. The “Buffett rule” taxes on the “rich” that the president has been touting amount to the equivalent of couch-cushion change compared to our debt and unfunded liabilities. Indeed, confiscating outright all the wealth of the richest 400 Americans would barely cover one year of Obama deficits. The economic history of the past half-century backs up the math: only by reducing spending can we get our fiscal house in order, and raising taxes on the productive stifles economic growth and reduces tax revenues, thus hastening the downward spiral. The fundamental wisdom known by every village explainer––spend more than you earn and you’ll go broke, give people something for nothing and they will expect something for nothing forever, there is no free lunch, if something can’t go on forever it won’t––doesn’t seem to penetrate the minds of the self-styled “genius” party.
Yet despite this crisis, all the liberals can do is recycle old class-warfare bromides. Repeating the juvenile slogans of the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Democrats decry the “1%” and the President shrieks about the rich “paying their fair share.” The fact that among advanced economies the U.S. already has the most progressive income taxes and the highest corporate taxes––even as nearly half of taxpayers pay nothing while an equal number receive some sort of government largesse––can’t penetrate the fog of clichés befuddling the liberal brain. No, stale Hollywood scripts about “Wall Street” pirates and evil oil corporations are recycled into government policy, and jeremiads against “greed” and “materialism” abound. The President even invokes Jesus Christ in support of his redistributionist schemes, his liberal supporters conveniently forgoing their usual hysteria about the theocratic camel’s nose poking into the political tent.
Nothing in any of this has anything to do with the reality of our economic sickness or its cures. Worse yet, we’ve heard it all before over a century ago. In the late 19th century, increasing immigration from Russia, Poland, southern Italy, and other non-Teutonic countries, along with the growing wealth, social mobility, and economic opportunity created by industrial capitalism, agitated the well-born and well-educated elites worried about racial “degeneration” and the weakening of the American order. Impressed by Karl Marx, they saw industrial capitalism and corporations, and the increasing materialism, amoral greed, civic corruption, and crass competition these fostered, as the force that would destroy the American moral order and empower the lesser breeds who thought of nothing but greed and selfish gain, no matter the future costs to society. The reformers’ answer was to turn over government rule to a “natural aristocracy” created by breeding and education, the denizens of the “best class” who could restore order to a disintegrating society and rein in the “incorporated power and greed,” as Brooks Adams put it, of “robber barons” like the Rockefellers and Morgans and the other “malefactors of great wealth” criticized by T.R. Roosevelt.
About Bruce Thornton
By Roger O'Daniel October 24, 2011
Prolog
Palestine never was a Nation State recognized by the United Nations or any Western Power. At best, it was a protectorate of some other nation. Ancient Rome, Turkey, Syria and Great Britain come to mind. Palestine is not now recognized as a sovereign nation. The “promised land” of the Israelites started west of the Jordan River and extended west to the Mediterranean Sea.
This issue began as a proposal to the UN by Hamas, the de-facto government of Palestine and the Gaza strip. This is part of a formal resolution brought forth by USA, Russia and others to form a separate Palestinian State. The resolution, as it now stands amended by Hamas, incorporates a provision to seize from Israel East Jerusalem in its entirety to become the capitol city of the new Palestinian State. Why would Hamas want to do that?
Hamas claims that the UN “seized” the land of Palestine to create the nation of Israel in the first place. Hamas never recognized Israel’s right to exist. If Hamas can partition Jerusalem into two parts, Hamas believes Israel could be goaded into another fight.
The following is the text of the newest flyer (read more about the flyer here).
I may have been dead for over 1000 years but I am still very much alive.
I told my people I was a prophet — in fact, not just any prophet but the last one. Posing as a prophet is really very simple. First and foremost you have to believe in yourself. Then people will start to believe in you. The more people who believe in you, the more others can be persuaded to believe in you. It snowballs. Today I still live through my followers and the rules I gave them to live by.
What is my religion? My religion is my ambition.
Last week, along with a cool-but-crazy monochrome-only digital camera, Leica announced that it was launching a a special edition of its M9 with fashion label Hermès. It will cost an eye-watering $25,000—and this video goes some way to explaining that price.
In fact, while the video concentrates on the Hermès collaboration, it helps explain why every other Leica camera is so expensive, too. There's gentle care lavished on each and every component as the devices are put together, and the whole process feels so damn human. This isn't mass production, it's craftsmanship. Whether it's enough to justify the purchase of a Leica though, well, that's an entirely different question. [Leica via The Verge]
Today we are struggling with people who believe the right to keep and bear arms is somehow a collective right, tied to militia membership, and not an individual natural right. This false assumption is based on today’s understanding and rhetoric. We also have the ambiguous 1939 Supreme Court case, U.S. vs. Miller that significantly fails to embrace the founding generation’s intent. The other area we have is the 2nd Amendment’s preamble that some point to as a reason to support the collective, militia tied concept. Yet history and understanding of bearing arms teaches us what is really the intent – the right to keep and bear arms is an individual natural right!
