Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster. ...
...
It is ... no mistake that cultural Marxists in the form of "social justice warriors", PC busybodies and feminists tend to create artificial divisions between people and “classes” while attacking and homogenizing very real and natural divisions between individuals based on biological reality and inherent genetic and psychological ability.
... The insane lie that cultural Marxists seem to have conned themselves and others into believing is that their “activism” is somehow anti-establishment. In fact, social justice is constantly coddled and supported by the establishment. ... Cultural Marxists ARE the establishment.
... The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.
...You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. ...
... Barack Obama can endlessly proclaim his slogan of "Forward," but what he is proposing is going backwards to policies that have failed repeatedly in countries around the world. ...
... changed the high achievements and rewards of some members of society from an inspiration to others into a source of resentment and grievance for others.
... have largely ignored or downplayed the things in which Americans lead the world - ... - and treated the errors, flaws and shortcomings that Americans share with human beings around the world as special defects of “our society.”
... encourage people who are contributing nothing to the world to complain, and even organize protests, because others are not doing enough for them.
... rationalized the breaking of laws by those who choose to picture themselves as underdogs fighting an oppressive “system”, even when these are college students from affluent homes.
... verbally turned military heroes who put their lives on the line for their country into victims of war, people whom one might pity but never want to emulate.
... changed the role of education from equipping students with knowledge and intellectual skills to weigh issues and make up their own minds into a process of indoctrination with the conclusions already reached by the anointed.
... put the people whose work creates the goods and services that sustain a rising standard of living on the same plane as people who refuse to work, but who are depicted as nevertheless entitled to their “fair share” ...
... treated the conclusions of their vision as axioms to be followed, rather than hypotheses to be tested.
... some ... have treated reality itself as subjective or illusory, thereby putting current intellectual fashions and fads on the same plane as verified knowledge and the cultural wisdom distilled from generations of experience.
... give people who have the handicap of poverty the further handicap of a sense of victimhood.
... romanticized cultures that have left people mired in poverty, violence, disease and chaos, while trashing cultures that have led the world in prosperity, medical advances and law and order.
... have been quick to find excuses for crime and equally quick to attribute wrong-doing to police, even when discussing things for which they have neither expertise or experience...
... encouraged the poor to to believe their poverty is caused by the rich ...
... acted as if their ignorance of why some people earn unusually high incomes is a reason why those incomes are either suspect or ought not be permitted.
... filtered information in the media, in the schools, and in academia, to leave out things that threaten their vision of the world.
... Above all, they exalt themselves by denigrating the society in which they live and turning its members against each other.It’s a must read, especially for those who hold “the vision of the anointed”.
... So what is socialism? ... – an unsustainable Ponzi scheme in which elite overseers [intellectuals] , for the duration of their own lives, enjoy power, influence, and gratuities by implementing a system that destroys the sort of wealth for others that they depend upon for themselves....
... When this latest attempt at statism is over, Barack Obama will enjoy a sort of Clintonism, a globe-trotting post officium lifestyle of multimillion dollar honoraria to fund a lifestyle analogous to “two Americas” John Edwards, “earth in the balance” Al Gore, a tax-exempt yachting John Kerry, a revolving-door Citibank grandee like Peter Orszag, or a socialist Strauss-Kahn in $20,000 suits doling out billions to the “poor.” ...[h/t]
Unreason. Hatred. Bitterness. Prejudice. This more or less summarizes the liberal chorus heard in the days after the Tucson shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. But all of the words quoted in the paragraph above were spoken or printed in 1963, in the days immediately following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
... Sometimes, lone gunmen just go out and do horrible things. Five decades after Dealey Plaza, this is a truth that intellectuals still can’t accept.Good point. More validation for Thomas Sowell's assertion: "Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect."
"The capacity to grasp and manipulate complex ideas is enough to define intellect but not enough to encompass intelligence, which involves combining intellect with judgment and care in selecting relevant explanatory factors and in establishing empirical tests of any theory that emerges. Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect. Wisdom is the rarest quality of all — the ability to combine intellect, knowledge, experience, and judgment in a way to produce a coherent understanding." (Thomas Sowell, "Intellectuals and Society")A must read for the New Year. "Intellectuals and Society", by Thomas Sowell.
... Illumination on what makes intellectuals commit to ideas too stupid for ordinary people to believe, and the effect of these ideas on our culture, can be found in the pellucid prose and crisply coherent analysis of conservative sage Thomas Sowell in his book...
Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5
Here's an idea for the Republicans - run Sowell in 2012.
