Since this week was the anniversary of the death of Alexis de Tocqueville in Cannes (in 1859), Señor Banner’s essay is a timely riff on some of the themes that de Tocqueville developed during his travels through America in the 1830s.
There is an new version of "Democracy in America" by Everyman’s Library. It is a sewn binding in hardcover with its own page marker. However, it doesn’t credit the translator and one critic says it is abridged. Thus, I am still looking for the definitive work.
If anyone is aware of a hardbound,unabridged edition, please let me know. For now, despite its other flaws, the Everyman version is durable.
As you can see, Señor Banner finds American exceptionalism quite to his taste. Like many who are on the outside looking it at the situation, he suffers for this country in its current crisis.
Confronting the current economic crisis affecting America (and the rest of the world as a consequence) there are two very different camps.
One of those that would want no government intervention in the economy, letting the chips fall where they may. And then there are those, unfortunately currently in power in America, that are implementing their life long dream of a socialist takeover of all aspects of American life by the government.
What are the benefits of letting the chips fall where they may? They are two fold:
First, the problem is limited in time. It starts. It ends. It’s over.
Then, the problem is limited to a finite number of victims. Those who made mistakes, fall and pay for their errors. Those that didn’t, move on without a scratch by comparison. All the healthy participants end up better off for it. A crisis makes Capitalism stronger. Capitalism is self-cleansing. Capitalism works as the immune system of a society. Diseases are cured and the corpses expelled from a Capitalist society.
What does socialist government intervention do instead?
- - - - - - - - -
First, the problem is postponed indefinitely leaving it to many future generations to continue to suffer for other people’s mistakes.
Then, the suffering is distributed amongst the biggest possible number of people making all of them victims, independently of whether they made a mistake or not.
With socialism, you pay for your mistakes and you pay for the mistakes of others.
In the meantime, socialist government intervention delays and impedes the cure of the illnesses that a country suffers.
Socialism is a guarantee that society’s diseases will be spread by government mandate to all members of the population.
And then, socialism works as a ratcheting system against Freedom. Each socialist measure, like the coils of a python around its victim, leaves the individual a little less Free until all Freedom is gone and you are inside the red hammer and scythe, the python’s stomach.
The only democracy socialism brings about is the spread of suffering to everyone.
Socialists do not benefit from improving the lot of the population. On the contrary, a healthy, happy and prosperous population would have no use and no need for socialist government intervention.
Socialists are like maggots, they feed on sores. They thrive on human disgrace. They need a permanent supply of hurting victims of “injustice”, a permanent supply of “underprivileged”, an inexhaustible supply of “hungry and needy children”. Otherwise, what’s their purpose in life?
Going back to the fact that a healthy, happy and prosperous population would have no use and no need for socialist government intervention it should be noted that the current crisis was brought about by socialist government intervention. Small wonder this crisis occurred under a socialist congress.
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are not Capitalist, free market institutions. They are explosive mines put in the path of the American economy to make it blow up sky high and they have fulfilled their purpose far better than their creators ever dreamed.
Is it a coincidence that this happened in the middle of the presidential elections? Yeah, sure it is. All this was and is part of a strategy.
Soros, Alinsky, Cloward and Piven are names that mean little to most Americans. [google is your friend here, Dear Reader - D] Many have probably never heard of them. They are, though, amongst the architects of the current situation that has nothing at all to do with chance.
The current crisis happened by design. It was planned, carefully conceived, begun to be put in practice many decades ago and its parts have each clicked into place with a precision that would be envied by a Swiss watch maker.
Making a watch is easy.
Making the most extraordinary, the biggest, the brightest, the most glorious experiment in Freedom and respect for the Rights of the Individual fail miserably and have its members scramble for tyranny to replace their devalued Freedoms is such an achievement in the field of moral fraud, deception and betrayal of moral values as to surpass and eclipse any other similar previous attempt.
To have Americans vote for a socialist tyrant and be grateful to him for taking America away from them is an achievement that can’t be compared to any other known to man.
Never in the known history of our species has humanity’s continuous striving for Freedom experienced a setback, a betrayal or a moral default of comparative magnitude.
The mythical war for the city of Troy has nothing whatsoever over the defeat of American Capitalism at the hands of the socialists who were allowed to develop, grow and fester under the protection of the very Freedoms they plotted for decades to overthrow and destroy.
The concept of the Trojan horse has been implemented to the utmost by the socialist America haters that have invaded and perverted American academia and mainstream media making them turn against America and everything America represents.
There’s only one pervasive theme in the current American cultural scene: “I hate America”.
The moral poison of socialism makes the worst that animals have to offer pale in comparison. No snake, no scorpion, no spider could ever concoct the juice to destroy America. Socialism could.
If you want to put it in the words of the current first lady: “America is a mean country”. She is quite in tune with the “minister” who married her. He is known to yell “God damn America” at the top of his voice. The current President sat at the feet of such a “man” for twenty years.
That America is a “mean” country surely is news to the many millions of individuals, who, since America’s birth have so much benefited from America’s virtues - and amongst them from America’s generosity.
America has been the epitome of inventiveness, of industriousness, of commerce, of men dealing with each other by mutual consent and for mutual benefit and in peace.
America has been the epitome of the generosity of the man who fights tyranny for Freedom itself and then doesn’t claim for himself the territory or the lives or the wealth of those freed by his efforts. Instead, Americans salute like a friend and brother and then they go home to continue with their own lives.
America is not nor has ever been a “mean” country!
America is the kindest country in the history of man!
America has been a country of creators, of lovers of Freedom, of Freedom givers.
America has made the lives of others better, safer, longer and more enjoyable.
American efforts have added so much goodness to the lives of so many people on this planet that there is no way to repay them.
See the “Timeline of United States Inventions and Discoveries” on the net. America has contributed more to the well being of mankind that all the rest of the nations put together.
No country in history has been so inventive and so industrious as America.
No country in history has sent more food to the hungry than America.
No country in history has sent more medicine to the sick than America.
No country in history has sent her children into battle to depose tyrants and then said “there’s your Freedom back, we are going home now”.
Who is so base and so immoral as not to shed tears of admiration and of gratitude in front of this level of decency?
Who created as much? Who shared so much with others with a generosity that knows no comparisons?
The Stars and Stripes is the only flag in history that universally means Freedom.
Can any other country make the same claim? None.
How many oppressed around the planet have seen the Stars and Stripes come across a field and have said to themselves and each other “Tyranny is over, Freedom’s coming”?
How do you say “thank you” for all this? What kind of “thank you” would suffice?
In the presence of such greatness, what abysmal level of moral corruption would make a person associate “mean” with “America”?
Only by having every human concept reversed in her soul can a person call America “mean”.
Only by having “good” turned into “bad”, “kind” into “mean”, “correct” into “wrong”, “day” into “night”, “health” into “sickness” and so on to the end of human knowledge can such a moral reversal be accomplished.
You have to willingly and wantonly choose evil to get to that point. It doesn’t happen by chance. You don’t stumble upon such moral state by accident. You have to choose evil and nurture it and develop it and tend to it for most of your life.
And that, and no less, is the moral state of the socialists currently in government in America.
And it is such state of moral decay that guides their plans for the future of America and for the world.
So what can you give America in return for so much greatness and so much generosity in sharing it?
For me, most of what I have to give goes into saying this:
Americans, you are the best people on Earth.
You have made a humongous, horrendous moral mistake in choosing a pack of socialist cannibals to govern America.
But you ARE the best people on Earth.
So you CAN take America back.
Back for Freedom.
Back for Truth.
Back for Justice.
Back for the American Way.
You are more than them both morally and in numbers.
You have defeated countless tyrants. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany fell to your Freedom giving efforts. What are a few socialist wannabes if you decide to take your Freedom back?
All they have in their utter depravity is your acquiescence.
Take it away.
Do not let them get away with this.
Yes, you have made a mistake. Yes, it is the biggest mistake in your whole history. A horrendous mistake that threatens your whole future and any possibility of Freedom on this planet.
Correct it.
It is not too late, yet.
It will be too late if you wait too long.
This won’t correct itself.
Do the American thing: act!
America is a nation of doers: do!
This is a war. A war for the future of America and of mankind.
There’s only one thing you can’t do in a war: lose.
32 comments:
Yes, the definitive, unabridged version of Democracy in America is the one edited/translated by Harvey Mansfield, published by U. Chicago Press, and available in hardback. Mansfield's 70 page introduction is indispensable.
I have a "Wow" file, and Mr. Banner's essay is going in it. Thank you. I just wish it didn't sound so much like a beautiful eulogy for the dead despite the call for action at the end.
The title should read "Don't Let the Socialists Steal America from the World" because America has been unique with a way of doing things that has brought the greatest good to the greatest number. She has been a beacon of hope to many who found their freedom on her shores or have been inspired by her flame flickering from afar to attempt improvement of their own home countries.
Meanwhile, the socialist backwaters that Obama is emulating are a dime a dozen.
Leftists carry on about biodiversity and obscure insects or animals being lost to the world, but they cheer the homogenization of human government and of course, at the lowest common denominator.
They are logically and morally incoherent.
"Confronting the current economic crisis affecting America (and the rest of the world as a consequence) there are two very different camps.
One of those that would want no government intervention in the economy, letting the chips fall where they may. And then there are those, unfortunately currently in power in America, that are implementing their life long dream of a socialist takeover of all aspects of American life by the government."
The problem is, BOTH of those camps are simply stark, raving mad.
The criticism of socialism is unnecessary at this moment, I hope.
As for the "free market" ideology, it is so stupid that only a really great desire for the secular paradise of "unconstrained market" could make anyone believe in it.
There never was and never will be anything like a "unconstrained market". It is always being built - similarly to communism, which was never really achieved in the Socialism camp.
In that way, ideologues on both sides can explain that their beloved nostrum "hasn't been really tried".
And the result of both is the same: death and famine, whether in Ireland or in Ukraine. For any problems, there is one solution: liquidate! Let them die!
You can grab the complete work at LibriVox (volume II here.
Text and audio versions available. It's free, ad legal (copyright expired).
This was a phenomenal piece and I will be sending it to everyone I know. Thanks for posting it
The problem is, BOTH of those camps are simply stark, raving mad.That's a fairly tall statement. Do you have useful evidence in support of it?
"For Lincoln, Jefferson, and Jaffa equality is equality of natural rights. So interpreted, equality does not preclude obvious inequalities of natural inabilities or talents. But, no matter how superior intellectually a man might be, he has no natural right to treat another as a horse. For Declaration theology, this prohibition is rationally self-evident, not as it would be for Tocqueville...or for Nietzsche...a matter of sentiment, faith, or will. "
This kind of meretricious, gnostic, sloppy argument is exactly what precludes the comprehension of existence in the mind of the liberal.
Click here to see what it does to them. There is simply no one there.
It's not only tall, it doesn't match reality. It's true that we have never had a "true" capitalist system, but we've had things that get close to it - and it's easy to observe that the closer we get to a true capitalist system the freer and richer a society becomes. It's certainly true that this sounds similar to the socialist denial of a true socialist society ever existing but that's a semantic argument: a capitalist society thrives on freedom, and so the more freedom you have the more success that capitalist system consequently has. Those who subscribe to the capitalist ideal will be able to point to these more free societies as evidence, whereas those who subscribe to the socialist ideal are forced to ignore the consequently less free societies created by the move toward their ideal. They have to deny what is obvious; the capitalist can embrace what is obvious. He can be pragmatic because his ideals generate more freedom and greater wealth, whereas the socialist must be dogmatic and deny the truthas his ideals always generate tyranny.
Economics isn't the only part of the story though. The best economic system in the world will fail if it isn't rested on a good cultural foundation, which includes the concept of property rights and the right to freely associate - both fundamental elements of a market economy.
You take any country and look at how much the government interferes with property rights and you can probably get a good idea of what it's GDP will be like.
Look at the UK for instance. At the turn of the 20th century property rights were almost inviolable and the country was blasting through the biggest period of economic growth ever seen. From the 1920s onward property rights were eroded again. You can trace the rise and fall of government interference with property rights by how well the economy did and, generally speaking, as we've moved toward the 21st century we've lost many of those rights. Our economy was already failing well before this current economic crisis hit.
Or look at South American countries. Whilst there may not be the same overt expression of government interference in property rights in, say, paraguay, there is very little cultural foundation for the concept of property rights as we understand them, and so consequently the economy can't grow as there's always the fear of the government simply declaring your property to be theirs.
Economics are but one part of the equation. It's leftists, and others obsessed with wealth, that generally shrink problems down to economic questions whilst ignoring the larger cultural problem.
Robert L
Your coment was well over 800 words. That's past our 500 word limit.
PLEASE READ THE RULES ON THE HEADER OF THE COMMENT BOX.
Because others have responded to you, I am putting up your long quotes into two regulation-size comments. However, I would say that most people are interested in real life ideas from other commenters rather than big quotes.
Please adhere to the rules.
Thank you.
Robet L's critique, Part ICaveat re. Tocqueville (and Mansfield) diminution of the centrality of the Declaration of Independence- excerpts from a book I'm helping to edit by a rather formidable professor of political philosophy:
"Wettergreen’s attack on Tocqueville’s reduction of Declaration theology to a matter of will or sentiment, not rational insight, makes sense:
'Reason could not suggest to Tocqueville the harmony of equality and liberty. For him the passion for equality is the principle for equality, not its reason…Yet in the American political tradition that harmony is reasonable. Equality means above all, the equality of natural rights of all member of the human race, and those include the right to liberty…However, to Tocqueville, America’s doctrine of individual rights is not something reasonable and democratic. Tocqueville called it our precious inheritance from the English aristocracy…Because of this historical error Tocqueville could not guess, that politically the enemies of liberty are invariably the enemies of equality. That is today as in the past the enemies of liberty—on the Right and on the Left—deny the natural (i.e., universal or non-historical) basis of individual rights and affirm some doctrine of right founded in American law, relative social condition, history, traditional norms or formalities, subjective feelings, race or socio-economic class; not nature and not reason. They, like Tocqueville, cannot learn the lesson of Abraham Lincoln, ‘all men are created equal’ remains the decisive political truth because…those who do deny it can only do so because of an unjust motive. They, like Tocqueville, prefer to believe in the providential march of history, rather than affirm the simple truth of equality. Tocqueville’s affirmation of the natural habits of the heart, against bureaucracy’s relentless ‘rationalization’ of human life, amounts to a denial that the natural order is the rational order. So, as much as we admire the nobility of Tocqueville’s struggle against centralization of administration, we should recognize that it is not rational but fundamentally sentiment.'"
[see part II]
Robert L's Critique Part II.
[Thomas G.] West underscores the apolitical and therefore nihilist thrust of Tocqueville’s take on divine knowledge: “All ideas, Tocqueville maintains, in his discussion of poetry, are fictions; nature and reality are prosaic. The ideal is the realm of the imagination, not of the reason. What links men together in communities are therefore creations and illusions, for civilized man cannot live without faith in ideals. Not only are ideals not true; neither are general ideas. The truth is that all things are unique and can only be understood with exactitude as absolutely particular. This is God’s view of things. There are no ideas or classes that bind men together by nature. God’s idea of unity is the totality of infinite variety. Tocqueville implies that each human being by nature is a pure self alone; as soon as he begins to understand himself as belonging to a group that defines itself by ideals or general ideas, he loses touch with his original nature.”
. . .
For Mansfield and Tocqueville, in American democracy, as in modern democracy, “there are in principle no limits on the human will for that is one meaning of the sovereignty of the people—and the political forms of modern democracy are inadequate to contain a people’s willfulness” (Mansfield/Winthrop, Tocqueville’s "Democracy in America," Chicago 2000, pg lviii). Tocqueville’s neglect of the Declaration of Independent's politics in his Democracy in America is reflected in his blindness about the difference between the basically tyranic “idea of equality that dominated the French revolution as distinct from that which the American…It was the [American] that incorporated the consent of the governed into a constitutionalism designed to prevent the tyranny of the majority no less than the minority” (Harry Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom, pgs 424-431, 529).
Consider Jaffa’s reply to Mansfield’s charge that Democracy in America “is a book which you do not sufficiently appreciate:” “I have studied him, and I have always thought that it was a defect of Tocqueville that he did not distinguish the different senses of equality, and that he never had any thematic discussion of the meaning of equality in the Declaration of Independence” (From the transcript of the Jaffa/Mansfield conflict at the Henry Salvatori Conference on Modern Freedom, April 19, 1996).
“The Declaration’s idea of human equality is encapsulated in the idea that no such distinction arises between man and man as there is between man and horse, such as to make one man by nature the ruler of another” (Jaffa, A New Birth of Freedom, pg 112). For Lincoln, Jefferson, and Jaffa equality is equality of natural rights. So interpreted, equality does not preclude obvious inequalities of natural inabilities or talents. But, no matter how superior intellectually a man might be, he has no natural right to treat another as a horse. For Declaration theology, this prohibition is rationally self-evident, not as it would be for Tocqueville...or for Nietzsche...a matter of sentiment, faith, or will. Wettergreen condemns Tocqueville’s primacy of individual over political salvation against its defense by Peter Lawler (The Restless Mind, Lanham, 1993, pg 192 nt 7).
Archonix said:
...You take any country and look at how much the government interferes with property rights and you can probably get a good idea of what it's GDP will be like.
Look at the UK for instance. At the turn of the 20th century property rights were almost inviolable and the country was blasting through the biggest period of economic growth ever seen. From the 1920s onward property rights were eroded again. You can trace the rise and fall of government interference with property rights by how well the economy did...
Our foray into the Tea Party in Charlottesville produced some interesting information. One bit was a blog called Tertium Quids, which I will eventually post about. Meanwhile, you may be interested in this pdf on property rights in Virginia that they linked to from the Virginia Institute.
Virginia, even more than the New England colonies, reflects her English roots.
The Rise, Fall, and Undetermined Future of Private Property Rights in the CommonwealthI haven't read it yet but it's on my list. I suspect you will find it congenial to your thinking.
It's interesting to see this essay now. I'm just writing a brief history of the birth of capitalism in Europe. A fascinating subject. This was one of the innovations that were made in medieval and early modern Christian Europe, not in Greco-Roman Antiquity. According to scholar Avner Greif, Modern economic growth has roots in pre-modern times (the Middle Ages) and reflects an economic, social and political process through which European economies became the first modern economies:
"The organization of society in the West was centered on intentionally created institutions. Neither the state nor kin-based social structures, such as tribes and clans, were central to these institutions. Instead, the organization of society was centered on interest-based, self-governed, non-kin-based organizations. These organizations – mainly in the form of corporations – were vital to Europe’s political and economic institutions during the late medieval growth period as well as the modern growth period….Interest-based, self-governed, non-kin-based economic and political corporations were therefore established. Since then, this particular societal organization – centered on self-governed, non-kin-based organizations and individualism – has been behind the behavior and outcomes that led to European-specific economic and political developments. This societal organization is the common denominator behind such seemingly distinct historical phenomena as the late medieval economic expansion, the rise of European science and technology (Mokyr 2002), and the creation of the modern European state, the ultimate manifestation of a self-governed, non-kin-based corporation composed of individuals rather than larger social units (Greif 2004b). If institutions are central to economic, social, and political outcomes, and institutional development is a historical process, the roots of the eventual success of the West may very well lie in its past political and economic institutions."
Europeans did use the Greco-Roman heritage, above all Greek mathematics and natural philosophy, but they employed this material in new and creative ways. The Romans left them with a unifying learned language across political borders, Latin, and with Roman law. Greif again:
"Finally, the Roman heritage in the West includes the Roman legal tradition. Many economists would agree that in order to bring about and support modern economic growth it is necessary to have a particular legal tradition - a legal tradition in which rules can be changed to fit the evolving needs of the economy and that ensures that individuals have property rights and freedom. Such a tradition exists in the Western world, and it is a legacy of the Roman period. It was then that the European legal tradition was formulated, and despite various challenges, it has survived the test of time. One can only wonder if modern economic growth could have occurred in Europe if it had possessed one of the alternative legal traditions that emerged elsewhere, such as the divine law that dominates the Muslim world."
Dymphna, thanks, I've bookmarked it and I'll read it when I get a bit of time. The opening chapter certainly seems to align with what I'm thinking.
Apologies for having run afoul of the comment limits here.
As to people being interested in "real life comments" from other readers, I think that quotes from serious scholars -- and if Harvey Mansfield, the late John Wettergreen, Tom West, Harry Jaffa are not serious scholars, aside from being exemplary conservative stalwarts, then I don't know what is -- are important for getting at the root problems of Tocqueville that most people won't otherwise be aware of. They also help to see why Jaffa's New Birth of Freedom, and the "Declaration piety" which it explicates, is a fundamentally more important book than Tocqueville for understanding the true grounds, i.e., apart from considerations of mere utility/preference/sentiment, for why America should survive and how to go about doing so.
As to Homophobic Horse -- if you care make an attempt at an argument as to why it is not the case that man is possessed of natural rights (the account of which is found in the very clear argument Jaffa/Jefferson make), then perhaps one might not be disposed to think your statement anything other than blustering assertion. There's nothing gnostic about it whatsoever. In fact, natural (emphasis, natural) equality of human beings is predicated in self-evidence. For logical explication of self-evidence (because, after all, what is "self-evident" does not mean that it's something that occurs to any Tom/Dick/Harry bumbling down the street), consider this from a Thomist. And this.
It's no more natural than Sharia Law. Nor is it not natural it enables the spread of the mortal enemy. For instance, the natural right of the individual to free movement. Open borders enables the spread of Islam into the gnostic west more than anything else.
The idea of our values and reason being co-eternal with and synonymous with creation--is--gnostic.
You could well respond with an inferred dialectical opposite, that I'm a nihilist and don't believe in natural right, like Nietzsche, but this too would be a manifestation of reason idolatry.
You have "Marxists" in your country -- not the "European-type Democratic Socialists". You are in a downward spiral and the only way out is war. The Western World Marxist sleepers did it to you when they attacked SA with protests.
They don't care about what atrocities happen in South Africa now, anymore than they care about the the Vietnamese who suffered once the West left. Celebrities, Hollywood, the media, Western professors, intellectuals, the powerful people who can change the world -- they're done with you now. You can't even get the story of the Farm Murders told worldwide.
They're currently engrossed in destroying the USA and Israel, the only strong Western Capitalist countries left in the world. And then will come the thousand years of darkness Reagan spoke of.
Archonix,
"it's easy to observe that the closer we get to a true capitalist system the freer and richer a society becomes." Really? What have you been observing to arrive at that conclusion? Those nations with the highest development index scores are "socialist" by US standards and use higher levels of government intervention.
Dymphna,
Incompetent capitalists are not the only people to pay for their negligence, millions of innocent shareholders,workers and bank depositors also suffer as a consequence. Any administraton with a conscience will try to lessen the negative effects on society. I'm sure you've heard the old saying "behind every independent capitalist is the taxpayer and his wallet"
Dymphna, I'm thinking about translating this and posting it on my blog. Can you tell me more about who Jorge Banner is? Is he one of the GoV readers?
Great essay! It sounds as something comming from long gone times.
Mace, living on one of those "high index" countries with huge government intervention, and having spent time in several others, I think I would take issue with whoever came up with these index scores.
What does socialist government intervention do instead?.
In the current American economic crisis, it rewards malfeasance, entrenches incompetence and further cements an already well-established Ivy League spawned legion of mutually supporting cronies that are systematically looting this world's only Superpower of its hard-earned wealth.
Has anyone asked themselves exactly why our Congress and Senate are so solicitously bailing out the top level exectuives of financial (mis)management institutions and the automotive industry?
In a properly operating capitalistic system, such incompetence is rewarded with bankruptcy. If such failure is merely a byproduct of unfortunate circumstances, properly operated corporations or institutions will either buy out or rescue a product or brand name that still has worth.
Instead, we are being treated to a spectacle of craven and unadulterated greed the likes of which has never before been seen in human history.
Again, why are our politicians bailing out all of these incompetent CEO's?
THOSE INCOMPETENT CEOs ARE THE ONES WHO SIGN THE RE-ELECTION CAMPAIGN CHECKS.
This is conflict of interest writ large.
We have a government largely composed of lawyers who have never built anything of substance in their entire lives. In turn, as individuals wholly involved in a service-based industry (i.e., lawyering), they see nothing wrong with the continuous outsourcing of America's manufacturing economy until this once-great nation is gradually becoming nothing more than a tourist destination.
I will be persuaded that outsourcing works only when I finally see CEO positions being outsourced to Second and Third World countries.
America is now a ONE-PARTY system of the almighty dollar. There is so little distinction between the two political parties that they may as well be the same entity. This was proven in spades when BOTH PARTIES attempted to force the Z Visa general amnesty for illegal aliens down the throats of honest American citizens and immigrants. This one single event should have served notice to the general population that America’s government was no longer operating in the best interests of its people and, instead, had entered a phase of self-serving greed and moral cowardice like few others in history.
In the presence of such greatness, what abysmal level of moral corruption would make a person associate “mean” with “America”?.
The same level of moral corruption required in order to subscribe to something so racist as “Black Liberation Theology”, which does not seek equality but instead desires the supremacy of Blacks over others. Clearly, no lessons have been learned from Dr. King and other civil rights leaders. Instead, simple and brutish tribalism has carried the day all the way into America’s Oval Office.
Witness the obeisance paid to the brutally oppressive tribal rulers of other countries for a glimpse of what lurks in the heart of our Chief Executive Officer. This is the triumph of style over substance. It is the liberal notion of the primative being more authentic and the unsophisticated as being more genuine. True achievement means nothing compared to the ability to sway hearts and minds with empty promises and shop-worn platitudes.
As with any socialist catastrophe, we see those in power utterly incapable of creating any actual wealth but hell bent upon redistributing the wealth of those who can create it. As if mere manual labor carries with it no right to dispose of its earnings as it sees fit. Instead, our supposedly intellectual betters are deemed the wiser heads who, unable to make a shoe or belt, still feel compelled to clothe this nation’s flotsam with the riches they steal from honest workers. GAH!
costin asked:
Dymphna, I'm thinking about translating this and posting it on my blog. Can you tell me more about who Jorge Banner is? Is he one of the GoV readers?
There's not much I can tell you about him except that he has much experience with repression and being an object of hatred.
Jorge is a lurker. He doesn't dare set up a comment account for fear of being tracked down. But he reads everything, here and at other anti-jihad blogs.
He's intelligent, thoughtful, and for icing on the cake, he donates to us every month!
It was those monthly donations that got us started on a series of conversations. His previous post was just his own ruminations, and I asked permission to put them up publicly, as I did with this one.
He's something, huh?
We're lucky to have him. I hope he stays safe.
Robert L--
I have no argument with your quoting or discussing the differences between various scholars.
Sure, AdT got lots wrong...but his amazing prescience re the strengths and weaknesses of Americans-style democracy continue to amaze.
Reading him (eons ago) re the difference between life on one bank of the Ohio vs. life on the other was a turning point for me at a young age. He pointed out so clearly that where slavery existed (on one side), poor whites had only their superiority over black slaves. On the other bank of the Ohio, poor whites found it paid to be industrious and move up into the prosperous agrarian class.
AdT may have been wrong on much, but he is one of those observers on whose shoulders we stand in order to see more clearly.
Archonix,
I don't presume to comment on internal American affairs as I have little knowledge and no interest in the subject. However there are quite offensive and ignorant comments made on this site in regard to other countries' political and social systems, on that subject, I will comment.
We will have to agree to disagree,the most desirable society is a matter of individual preference, in the final analysis. Whatever the realty, the cherished American belief that the whole world is desperate to migrate to the US is not supported by surveys. Very low percentages of citizens of other Western countries want to permanently move to the USA. We prefer to live in our socialised hells with universal health care which produces better outcomes, much lower homicide rates and decent welfare safety nets- perhaps we're given an inaccurate picture by the media. You could argue that "socialised" medicine is incompatible with liberal democracy, however, the claims I see on this site that privatised medicine produces better outcomes is not supported by the facts.
Back to the anti-jihad struggle.
True Stories of Canadian Health Care for Mace
Quote: ". . .the only Canadians who are satisfied with the system here are people who are healthy."Number of MRI machines per million populationhmmmmm
Obama the Pitchfork Operator: Remake of the Soviet Classic"My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks," Barack Obama told the CEOs of the world's most powerful financial institutions on March 27, when they cited competition for talent in an international market as justification for paying higher salaries to their employeesWhat is striking of the above statement is Obama's belief that he stands between the bankers and mod violence and lynch rule. Is this what the president of the US thinks the USA is about? That the rule of law revolves around his person?
By and large The peoples Cube is bitingly satirical but humorous. In this linked article I see again the bitterness that was so manifest in East European essays when the Warsaw pact was a going concern. Never thought I would see the day that this would happen in the USA.
Well worth reading.
In related news VFR has some other alarming news.
Are the Democrats declaring civil war?Fact: the federal government under Obama has labelled essentially all people who disagree politically with Obama as potential terrorists, subject to investigation, as discussed by Andrew McCarthy at NRO.
Are the democrats declaring civil war? Hmmmm, let's see:
The DHS Intelligence Assessment Document marked "For Official Use Only" and entitled; Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, was released to law enforcement agencies nationwide. Its stated purpose was to "deter, prevent, preempt, or respond to terrorist attacks against the United States." Read the entire document here.
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Barack Obama administration seeks to change police questioning law The Obama administration is urging the US Supreme Court to overturn a landmark decision that stops police from questioning suspects unless they have a lawyer present.****
destroying the two party system "I was told by democratic officials in that meeting, that we were going to get billions of dollars that was gonna come down the pike our way, and we're gonna build an army (bigger than the US army) of democratic patronage jobs, that is going to completely freeze off the republicans for ever and ever"
2/6/09 - This was a live caller to the Savage Nation - Michael Savage, Host
Tocqueville did not misunderstand equality at all. His book might as well have been entitled Equality in America.
He understood equality to be a wonderful thing when earned, but the great natural trap of democracies. "Philosophic systems that destroy human individuality will have secret attractions for men who live in a democracy."
He came to America to discover why we were not doing poorly with it, and this is what he found: "The only way opinions and ideas can be renewed, hearts enlarged, and human minds developed is through the reciprocal influence of men upon each other.'
That was not present in Europe. If a tree fell in the road, Tocqueville advised, men would expect something to be done about it, while in America a committee would be formed and the tree removed immediately.
We are all Europeans now.
heroyalwhyness,
Interesting, however,
I doubt if there's a positive correlation between the health of a population and the ratio of MRI machines,this might be more indicative of the successful sales techniques of the manufacturers, than the usefulness of these devices in population health,the real measure is results. These are life expectancy,disease incidences and infant mortality,for example.Using this measure, "socialised" medicine is far superior. I've never disputed the fact that if you're rich in the US you probably have access to the best medical treatment in the world, "rich" is the operative term.
There is no longer undiluted socialized medicine in any developed country, not even the much vaunted Scandinavian socialist "utopias". The countries with the best results as measured by hard indicators like longevity, infant and maternal mortality etc. have a blend of public and private unlike what Mace has presented here.
Canada is the only country other than Cuba and North Korea that technically bans private health care (yet private clinics operate in Quebec, the most socialist province that the feds are afraid to reprimand for any reason because of its malcontent French speaking population. In addition there are shortcuts for politicians, athletes, Workman's compensation cases etc. around the long waiting lists that undiluted socialized health care engenders for the middle with no connections). Cuba's vaunted superior system is another communist propaganda triumph (they can't get even an aspirin much of the time and if you believe their mortality figures etc. you're a gullible fool). In North Korea, health care seems beside the point as people are dying of starvation.
Socialized medicine basically brings a certain level of health care to everyone equally (there are many exceptions with examples above) which may be sub-optimal depending on tax funds available so it's better for the unlucky and feckless of society, but worse for those who could afford to buy a better level of care for themselves were it available. The smug self congratulation at doing good for those less fortunate than you (including less hard working etc.) is supposed to make up for having to wait in ever lengthening lines with them as health care keeps eating up more of government budgets and available health care is rationed.
This works fine as long as you're healthy and never suffer the lines or if you're in line for a hangnail but when it's cancer treatment, there's a problem. You're allowed to buy a bigger house, better food and clothing, luxury items etc. but not quicker access to health care that would let you enjoy the above. Canadians have solved their problem by going to American clinics for quicker service, and these are not only the rich, but people who set their health as a priority for their own funds.
That escape valve won't be possible once Obama gets through lowering American health care to the lowest common denominator.
I would say America's best bet is to study the mixed private and public system and come up the middle instead of veering into the morass of socialized medicine.
Keep in mind that America's international statistical results on infant mortality etc. are dragged down by the permanent black underclass, same with education results and inflated criminal stats. Europe should get some taste of what the US has been dealing with once it gets a similarly challenging group, in their case Muslims making up 12% of their population. Their crime stats have already deteriorated. It could be argued if not shut down by P.C. that in the long run slavery resulted in better living standards for American blacks who are better off than their African cousins regardless of how their ancestors arrived here while reviled whites now have a permanent collective burden despite personally not having committed a single racist act in their lives. Sins and aggrievements of the fathers passed on for generations?
I have pointed out in previous times that the French have a pretty good idea of how to run a healthcare system. They provide basic medical insurance but the hospitals aren't free at the point of delivery - unlike our NHS - so the general cost of healthcare is fairly low, not free, but far superior to anything we have to put up with. I know this because my father very nearly died in France, from a very nasty infection. Here they would have given him the cheapest generic they could find and told him to come back in a week to see if it was working, and then upgraded him to something more powerful if they thought it was necessary. There they gave him the latest and most effective antibiotics. He would have been dead within a week if they hadn't.
I don't get ill. I certainly don't want to repeat my last trip to hospital here when I had my appendix removed. It was filthy as a student hovel.
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