Well...can’t agree with putting so much of the blame on leftists for today’s insanities.
That may seem reasonable in the USA, but if you look around the ‘democracies’ of the world, you’ll find that the right & center-right are in power in a great many countries with steamroller authoritarians in charge. And with (now or in the recent past) some of the worst restrictions on freedom anywhere.
Australia, Austria, France, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Slovenia – they’re all in there waving their Covid sticks.
Of course, plenty of left-leaning countries also get black marks. (Traditionally socialist Sweden, however, seems to value individual freedoms more than most other countries. At least for now.)
So I don’t think it’s a question of ideology anymore.
It’s really about this: way too few good, intelligent and honest people among politicians, governments and institutions in today’s world. In ANY political party, or of ANY political bent.
Why is this so?
My guess is simply that an overwhelming majority of folks give ‘lip service’ to values like freedom, equality, justice. But deep down, they’re apolitical. What truly counts for them is their own material well-being. They don’t care much who rules them.
In other words, a majority of people are ready to put aside their ‘values’ in exchange for a life on the fortunate side. They’ll enthusiastically back any party or politician who promises, and seems able, to deliver, maintain, or claw back that fortunate life.
Can’t fight it. This is the way of human nature. The way of the world.
Eighty years after WW2, it took 18 months of Covid to teach us this lesson.
Not really so far left, especially in Western Europe.
Sure most Western European countries put post-WW2 social policies in place concerning health care, education, pensions, etc. But they are all also bedrock capitalist countries, including the Nordic countries, which are home to many huge and powerful multinationals.
These countries are almost all very nice places to live. This is why they they usually take top places on those 'world happiness indexes' done by Gallup.
They're free countries. You can start a business. Try to become a billionaire if that's your ambition.
But you're also free from things like worry about medical bills for yourself and famly. Or from worrying about the cost of college tuition for your kids. Even in ultra free market capitalistic Switzerland, this is so. Tuition at a top class Swiss university costs less than $2000 a year.
The electorates in these countries have become quite volatile. But they don't follow ideologies anymore. They vote and act according to their fears and apprehensions of the moment. Fear of economic pain, of being overrun with migrants, of being exterminated by covid, etc.
Politicians and governments know this so well. So if you look closely, no matter what their political leanings are, they frequently change their tune to fit in with their ambitions and to mirror feelings in the public at large.
The enemy cannot be summed up as a leftist or a centrist or a right winger.
The enemy is people who are bad, and who are ready to do bad things. They come in all sizes, shapes, colors, religions, and ideologies.
"But you're also free from things like worry about medical bills for yourself and famly. Or from worrying about the cost of college tuition for your kids. Even in ultra free market capitalistic Switzerland, this is so. Tuition at a top class Swiss university costs less than $2000 a year."
you're mistaking the cage for freedom.
clearly, the larger issue is not left vs right but authoritarian vs libertarian, but the left has been the lead on the authoritarian charge for 30 years or more, just like they were in the 60's and 70's and just like they were in the 30's.
the populace becoming entranced by and dependent upon the baubles they offer where liberty used to be is precisely they goal of those on the top of the pile over there and precisely how they stay there by suppressing social mobility.
Every State's ultimate goal is the optimal subjugation of its host population to enable it to maximize the resources it is able to extract from the capite censi for its own benefit.
When seen correctly, every action the State takes is directed to this end. All forms of redistribution (the cage) are simply the State adapting to the lowest level of perceived value the particular population it afflicts will tolerate to continue to be coerced and robbed.
This truth has been known since antiquity, but only by the few, which is why after ten millennia of being abused and robbed by rulers, we are still surrounded by legions of useful idiots who cheer for their own oppression.
Someday, perhaps, this will change, but probably not today.
"Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books. Roman tyrants invented a further refinement. They often provided the city wards with feasts to cajole the rabble, always more readily tempted by the pleasure of eating than by anything else.
The most intelligent and understanding amongst them would not have quit his soup bowl to recover the liberty of the Republic of Plato. Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, ‘Long live the King!’ The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them.”
~ Etienne de La Boétie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, 1548
A young UK based writer (philosophy PhD, working as a delivery driver to fund his writing) has written a very good article on how the unions drove (and continue to attempt to drive) the corona debacle in the UK. The theory is slowly getting mainstream media attention.
Gato, with all respect, I am certainly not mistaking cages for freedom.
In Western Europe, you’re free to benefit from social policies, and you’re free not to use them. You’re not obliged to send your children to public schools. You can send them anywhere you want, INSEAD, Oxford, MIT, Northwestern, La Sorbonne, wherever. Or, for younger ones, to my old private east coast high school (current annual tuition $35,000).
You don’t have to use the health services that are at your disposal. You can travel the world for the service you want. Just as Americans sometimes fly to Europe for specialized treatments.
These social institutions aren’t baubles or bribes, anymore than Medicare is one. They are understood social services.
Similarly, Western Europe has remarkable social mobility. Quality of life and standards of living in the original core EU countries have been exceptionally high for decades. And any EU citizen is free to move to any of the 25+ EU countries, find a better job, start a business, etc. And millions do move, every year. They can even set up in Switzerland and Norway, which are not a member countries.
On the other hand, I agree one could make a strong baubles + suppression argument for places like the Emirates or Saudi Arabia, which are absolute totalitarian monarchies (ironically, staunchly supported by the USA). Or many of the dozens of countries around the world that are perennially under military dictatorship.
I do think there’s something to what you say. Essentially, I think it comes down to whether you believe the individual is sovereign over his property (including his body). But there may also be an issue with definition of terms here.
For many of us, “left” means “state intervention in personal and economic matters, including forced collective provision of services” and “right” means extreme minarchism, if not market anarchism.
The “capitalist” countries you describe still have massive economic interventionism, including pro-business subsidies and tax breaks that create market distortions. I would not consider these economies essentially capitalist. They are corporatist at best.
Furthermore, these countries almost all limit firearm ownership even more than the United States does. I consider this a key indicator of freedom.
Thanks for the comment. Still, we mustn't kid each other. Just like European countries, the USA is 'capitalistic' with enormous state support for 'strategic industries', all kinds of handouts to corporations, tax breaks, bank bailouts, pharma contracts, etc. All Western countries play on the same economic instruments. No choice, if they want to stay in the global game.
Re gun ownership, the laws in various European countries are quite diverse, but most prohibit army type automatic weapons. Switzerland is something of an exception. If you're a male, you have to spend time in the army when you reach adulthood. You're issued a military assault rifle and you can take it to keep at home. You can even keep it after your spell of service if you want to.
Of course across Europe there are factions and mini-political parties clamoring for more liberal gun laws, but, truth be told, there's not much public interest.
"Well...can’t agree with putting so much of the blame on leftists for today’s insanities."
Please.
What we are currently enduring is the culmination of a century of leftism that has methodically and relentlessly empowered and enriched the State at the direct expense of the population at large.
In the U.S. at the beginning of the 20th century, the government was small and inexpensive, which had resulted in the highest period of economic growth in history.
Then the progressives took power. Starting with Woodrow "He Kept Us Out Of War" Wilson, who saddled us with both the income tax and the Federal Reserve, which have become the greatest engines of mass theft the world has ever seen, and which were the fundamental empowering factors for the growth of the leviathan that now afflicts us.
Then came the Mussolini-loving FDR* who instituted the administrative State, which has now largely replaced representative government with bureaucratic diktat.
So, in just over a century, the progressives have inflicted upon us the largest, most powerful, and most expensive State in the history of mankind, and in the process largely inverting the previous individual rights > collective interests paradigm the country was founded upon.
To paraphrase Tricky Dick Nixon, the progressive that gave us the EPA, finished off the gold standard, and broke bread with Mao, the greatest of all leftist genocidal murderers, "we are all progressives now".
Leftists of one stench or another have destroyed every society and economy they've seized control of. After a century of effort, they now control every major institution in the U.S., the U.N. and most of those in the rest of the nations that formerly comprised the free world.
It seems they believe that all the pieces are now in place, and they are going for the brass ring of the left: the complete subjugation of the population to the rulers.
They must not be permitted to prevail, or they will erase all the freedoms gained since the Magna Carta, and the unprecedented standards of living they created with it.
* Both Benito and Adolph were socialists, and therefore leftists, the nonsensical blather of of their communist brethren notwithstanding.
Well...can’t agree with putting so much of the blame on leftists for today’s insanities.
That may seem reasonable in the USA, but if you look around the ‘democracies’ of the world, you’ll find that the right & center-right are in power in a great many countries with steamroller authoritarians in charge. And with (now or in the recent past) some of the worst restrictions on freedom anywhere.
Australia, Austria, France, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Slovenia – they’re all in there waving their Covid sticks.
Of course, plenty of left-leaning countries also get black marks. (Traditionally socialist Sweden, however, seems to value individual freedoms more than most other countries. At least for now.)
So I don’t think it’s a question of ideology anymore.
It’s really about this: way too few good, intelligent and honest people among politicians, governments and institutions in today’s world. In ANY political party, or of ANY political bent.
Why is this so?
My guess is simply that an overwhelming majority of folks give ‘lip service’ to values like freedom, equality, justice. But deep down, they’re apolitical. What truly counts for them is their own material well-being. They don’t care much who rules them.
In other words, a majority of people are ready to put aside their ‘values’ in exchange for a life on the fortunate side. They’ll enthusiastically back any party or politician who promises, and seems able, to deliver, maintain, or claw back that fortunate life.
Can’t fight it. This is the way of human nature. The way of the world.
Eighty years after WW2, it took 18 months of Covid to teach us this lesson.
i think many of those places are so far left that even their "right" by comparison fails to get anywhere near the actual midline.
most are flat out "social democracies" and moving deeper into it for decades.
sweden, interesting, is one of the few that HAS been moving further right.
Not really so far left, especially in Western Europe.
Sure most Western European countries put post-WW2 social policies in place concerning health care, education, pensions, etc. But they are all also bedrock capitalist countries, including the Nordic countries, which are home to many huge and powerful multinationals.
These countries are almost all very nice places to live. This is why they they usually take top places on those 'world happiness indexes' done by Gallup.
They're free countries. You can start a business. Try to become a billionaire if that's your ambition.
But you're also free from things like worry about medical bills for yourself and famly. Or from worrying about the cost of college tuition for your kids. Even in ultra free market capitalistic Switzerland, this is so. Tuition at a top class Swiss university costs less than $2000 a year.
The electorates in these countries have become quite volatile. But they don't follow ideologies anymore. They vote and act according to their fears and apprehensions of the moment. Fear of economic pain, of being overrun with migrants, of being exterminated by covid, etc.
Politicians and governments know this so well. So if you look closely, no matter what their political leanings are, they frequently change their tune to fit in with their ambitions and to mirror feelings in the public at large.
The enemy cannot be summed up as a leftist or a centrist or a right winger.
The enemy is people who are bad, and who are ready to do bad things. They come in all sizes, shapes, colors, religions, and ideologies.
"But you're also free from things like worry about medical bills for yourself and famly. Or from worrying about the cost of college tuition for your kids. Even in ultra free market capitalistic Switzerland, this is so. Tuition at a top class Swiss university costs less than $2000 a year."
you're mistaking the cage for freedom.
clearly, the larger issue is not left vs right but authoritarian vs libertarian, but the left has been the lead on the authoritarian charge for 30 years or more, just like they were in the 60's and 70's and just like they were in the 30's.
the populace becoming entranced by and dependent upon the baubles they offer where liberty used to be is precisely they goal of those on the top of the pile over there and precisely how they stay there by suppressing social mobility.
and it has worked.
"you're mistaking the cage for freedom."
Exactly right.
Every State's ultimate goal is the optimal subjugation of its host population to enable it to maximize the resources it is able to extract from the capite censi for its own benefit.
When seen correctly, every action the State takes is directed to this end. All forms of redistribution (the cage) are simply the State adapting to the lowest level of perceived value the particular population it afflicts will tolerate to continue to be coerced and robbed.
This truth has been known since antiquity, but only by the few, which is why after ten millennia of being abused and robbed by rulers, we are still surrounded by legions of useful idiots who cheer for their own oppression.
Someday, perhaps, this will change, but probably not today.
"Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naively, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books. Roman tyrants invented a further refinement. They often provided the city wards with feasts to cajole the rabble, always more readily tempted by the pleasure of eating than by anything else.
The most intelligent and understanding amongst them would not have quit his soup bowl to recover the liberty of the Republic of Plato. Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, ‘Long live the King!’ The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them.”
~ Etienne de La Boétie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, 1548
My Good God.
Thanks
A young UK based writer (philosophy PhD, working as a delivery driver to fund his writing) has written a very good article on how the unions drove (and continue to attempt to drive) the corona debacle in the UK. The theory is slowly getting mainstream media attention.
https://twitter.com/BenIrvineAuthor/status/1429889081647972355?s=19
https://whistleblowerphilosopher.blogspot.com/2021/08/the-unions-and-u-turns.html?m=1
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/barricaded-from-covid-reality-by-government-and-media/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2021/09/21/cancer-backlog-scandal-much-worse-think/
Gato, with all respect, I am certainly not mistaking cages for freedom.
In Western Europe, you’re free to benefit from social policies, and you’re free not to use them. You’re not obliged to send your children to public schools. You can send them anywhere you want, INSEAD, Oxford, MIT, Northwestern, La Sorbonne, wherever. Or, for younger ones, to my old private east coast high school (current annual tuition $35,000).
You don’t have to use the health services that are at your disposal. You can travel the world for the service you want. Just as Americans sometimes fly to Europe for specialized treatments.
These social institutions aren’t baubles or bribes, anymore than Medicare is one. They are understood social services.
Similarly, Western Europe has remarkable social mobility. Quality of life and standards of living in the original core EU countries have been exceptionally high for decades. And any EU citizen is free to move to any of the 25+ EU countries, find a better job, start a business, etc. And millions do move, every year. They can even set up in Switzerland and Norway, which are not a member countries.
On the other hand, I agree one could make a strong baubles + suppression argument for places like the Emirates or Saudi Arabia, which are absolute totalitarian monarchies (ironically, staunchly supported by the USA). Or many of the dozens of countries around the world that are perennially under military dictatorship.
I do think there’s something to what you say. Essentially, I think it comes down to whether you believe the individual is sovereign over his property (including his body). But there may also be an issue with definition of terms here.
For many of us, “left” means “state intervention in personal and economic matters, including forced collective provision of services” and “right” means extreme minarchism, if not market anarchism.
The “capitalist” countries you describe still have massive economic interventionism, including pro-business subsidies and tax breaks that create market distortions. I would not consider these economies essentially capitalist. They are corporatist at best.
Furthermore, these countries almost all limit firearm ownership even more than the United States does. I consider this a key indicator of freedom.
Thanks for the comment. Still, we mustn't kid each other. Just like European countries, the USA is 'capitalistic' with enormous state support for 'strategic industries', all kinds of handouts to corporations, tax breaks, bank bailouts, pharma contracts, etc. All Western countries play on the same economic instruments. No choice, if they want to stay in the global game.
Re gun ownership, the laws in various European countries are quite diverse, but most prohibit army type automatic weapons. Switzerland is something of an exception. If you're a male, you have to spend time in the army when you reach adulthood. You're issued a military assault rifle and you can take it to keep at home. You can even keep it after your spell of service if you want to.
Of course across Europe there are factions and mini-political parties clamoring for more liberal gun laws, but, truth be told, there's not much public interest.
"Well...can’t agree with putting so much of the blame on leftists for today’s insanities."
Please.
What we are currently enduring is the culmination of a century of leftism that has methodically and relentlessly empowered and enriched the State at the direct expense of the population at large.
In the U.S. at the beginning of the 20th century, the government was small and inexpensive, which had resulted in the highest period of economic growth in history.
Then the progressives took power. Starting with Woodrow "He Kept Us Out Of War" Wilson, who saddled us with both the income tax and the Federal Reserve, which have become the greatest engines of mass theft the world has ever seen, and which were the fundamental empowering factors for the growth of the leviathan that now afflicts us.
Then came the Mussolini-loving FDR* who instituted the administrative State, which has now largely replaced representative government with bureaucratic diktat.
So, in just over a century, the progressives have inflicted upon us the largest, most powerful, and most expensive State in the history of mankind, and in the process largely inverting the previous individual rights > collective interests paradigm the country was founded upon.
To paraphrase Tricky Dick Nixon, the progressive that gave us the EPA, finished off the gold standard, and broke bread with Mao, the greatest of all leftist genocidal murderers, "we are all progressives now".
Leftists of one stench or another have destroyed every society and economy they've seized control of. After a century of effort, they now control every major institution in the U.S., the U.N. and most of those in the rest of the nations that formerly comprised the free world.
It seems they believe that all the pieces are now in place, and they are going for the brass ring of the left: the complete subjugation of the population to the rulers.
They must not be permitted to prevail, or they will erase all the freedoms gained since the Magna Carta, and the unprecedented standards of living they created with it.
* Both Benito and Adolph were socialists, and therefore leftists, the nonsensical blather of of their communist brethren notwithstanding.