Filed under: Australia, Bureaucracy, Canada, Communism, Economics, Europe, Foreign Policy, Free Speech, Freedom, Germany, History, Immigration, Law, Military, National Security, Politics, Regulation, United Kingdom, United Nations, World War II | Tags: Anglea Merkel's Dream, Fixing Human Nature, The Pact to End all Pacts
There are faint signs that perhaps the tensions involved over the debate about “globalism” and “national sovereignty” may be clearing a bit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that European Union (EU) member states must be prepared to transfer their powers over to Brussels at such a debate.
“In an orderly fashion, of course” Merkel said, as she explained that Germany had given up some of its sovereignty in order to join the EU, but national parliaments were in charge of deciding whether or not sign on to international treaties.
The CDU (Christian Democratic Union) leader said that trust and the willingness to compromise are essential in discussing the controversial UN migration pact, which the debate has continued to divide her own party.
Some important allies are pulling out of the agreement – Australia has left saying they will not risk their ‘hard won’ success in controlling their own borders. Trump has said no, and others are trying to figure out where they stand.
Chancellor Merkel accused critics of the Global Compact for Safe and Orderly Migration of “advocating ‘nationalism’ in its purest form.” She paraphrased her French counterpart Emmanuel Macron who recently claimed that “patriotism is the exact opposite because nationalism is treason.” Europe must surrender national sovereignty she said, to Brussels over “foreign affairs, migration, and development, as well as an increasing part of our budgets and even fiscal resources.” She also called for the creation of a real, true EU army and she stated that only through globalism can the world see peace.
This is an old, old argument — even on the original Thanksgiving we celebrate — can’t we all just get along? Well, no we can’t. It is now and always has been a pipe dream. And on throughout world history. The first humans probably started dispersing because they couldn’t get along together and were fighting about the kill that Roku dragged home for dinner, or who was going to get the choice piece of meat. You probably noticed in all the talk about happy family get-togethers for Thanksgiving dinner, there was also a lot of talk about how to deal with Uncle Harry who was a far Left Trump hater, or Uncle Ralph who was a bigoted Conservative.
The concept of a perfect society, or utopia, is as old as humanity. That is really the origin of communism and socialism and Nazism. They believed they were creating the perfect system. Here in America the Utopian Movement gained traction in 19th century America when thousands of people formed communities hoping to improve on existing society. The heyday was between 1820 and 1860. One of the remaining groups from that period is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or the Mormon Church, founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith. There was also the Oneida Community in upstate New York, the Shaker Movement, Brook Farm, a utopian community in Massachusetts.
We have had a lot of movements for “world peace.” There was the “war to end all wars” followed by the League of Nations”, followed by the rise of socialism with Mussolini and Hitler and World War II and the United Nations and the Cold War and another bunch of wars and Angela Merkel ought to be aware that the odds are quite definitely not in her favor.
In the present, Europe is suffering from Merkel’s invitation to all the unhappy people from the Middle East and Africa to migrate to Europe in the mistaken idea that Europe’s problem of declining birthrates and lack of young people to do the scut work and boring jobs would be solved by migration. Instead they got an invasion of Moslems whose religion demanded that those who did not submit to Allah should be killed. The migrants were welcomed all over Europe with gifts of food and clothing, flowers and song. The migrants were happy to accept the gifts, complained bitterly about the accommodations provided, and wanted to be supported by European generosity. They have instead proved willing to burn cars, rape any available women and girls, and engage in occasional shootings, and their communities have become dangerous ‘no-go’ districts. Merkel has just still not given up on her ideas of utopia.
In spite of all the Never-Trumpers, the deranged ‘celebrities’ in a constant search for the nearest microphone, and the newest “Democratic-Socialists”, plain old free-market capitalism in a constitutional republic seems to work better than anything else. The news of the day is not usually about how peaceful and happy the nations of the world are, but about their quarrels. Quarreling remains human nature, and we seem to be stuck with it.
Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Free Markets, Freedom, History, Politics, Progressivism, Socialism, The Constitution, The United States | Tags: Eliminate the Constitution, Fixing Human Nature, The Left's Ambitions
I ran across my notes from a panel discussion on where the Left is going, back in the fall of 2014, and it’s still of interest.
“The left is intellectually dead, and where it is headed toward is authoritarianism.”That was Kevin Williamson, roving correspondent for National Review.
William Voegeli of the Claremont Review of Books argued that “The fundamental assumption of the left is the innate goodness of each person. This assumption means that they are seeking to undermine the Constitution, which is based on a very different view of human nature. The Constitution pits the different branches of government against each other so that each will keep the others in check.”
As James Madison put it in the Federalist, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” and the Constitution supplies the “defect of better motives” through such balancing.
The Constitution, in other words, expects selfish ambition, and by expecting ambition, Voegeli noted, it legitimizes it—which is precisely what the left does not want to do. The left wants to supply not the “defect of better motives” but rather just “better motives,” Voegeli said. Liberals want to set up a system that allows our latent goodness to “flourish,” and the checks of our constitutional system can be discarded in favor of technocratic, centralized disinterestedness that allows each individual to live an authentic life of his choosing.
“The object is not to have one’s own way so much as to have a way that is one’s own,”
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economics, Economy, Energy, Health Care, Immigration, Law, Politics, Taxes, Unemployment | Tags: Fixing Human Nature, Glorifying Government, The Errors of the Left
A splendid essay by Angelo Codevilla in the Fall Claremont Review of Books on “The Rise of Political Correctness” points out that :
Every form of progressivism bases itself on the claim of a special “scientific,” knowledge of what is wrong with humanity and how to fix it. The formula is straightforward: the world is not as it should be because society’s basic “structural” feature is ordered badly. Everything else is “superstructure” meaning that it merely reflects society’s fundamental feature “For Marx and his followers that feature is conflict over the means of production in “present day society.” From the dawn of time, this class warfare has led to “contradictions”: between types of work, town and country, oppressors or oppressed, and so on. The proletariat’s victory in that conflict will establish a new reality by crushing all contradictions out of existence. Other branches of progressivism point to a different structural problem. For Freudians it’s sexual maladjustment, for followers of Rousseau it’s social constraint, for positivists it is the insufficient application of scientific method, for others it is oppression of one race by another. Once control of society passes exclusively into the hands of the proper set of progressives, each sect’s contradictions must disappear as the basic structural program is straightened out.
At the Democrat convention before Obama won his first election, Michelle Obama spoke of her husband’s speech about how “the world as it is just won’t do” and “the world as it should be,”and how much that inspired her.
The Left just doesn’t like the world as it is, and it doesn’t like human nature—which they believe must be “fixed.” This is a remarkable idea, for human nature is by definition not “fixable”. Human nature refers to the general psychological characteristics, feelings and behavioral traits of humankind regarded as shared by all humans. What the Left really means—is “fixing” those who have the nerve to disagree. You have probably noticed the absurd response to the election of Donald Trump instead of Hillary.
At our colleges and universities, there is a drive to “fix” history, by removing statues, changing names of buildings or programs, hiding the real history so no one will be offended by people living a couple of hundred years ago who owned slaves, or thought slavery was normal, without any understanding whatsoever that history is what happened. We have not yet managed to invent time travel. and you cannot change the past. In an era when the meaning of words is changed, people can change their gender to however they identify at the moment, religion becomes an enemy to be eliminated rather than a solace. Family is an outdated form, one’s personal plumbing and where to use it is merely a matter of preference rather than a rule or a custom.
The Left is wants a world where everybody is equal, and to move towards that goal they believe that you must tax those who are rich or have too much and give to those who do not have enough. That is their vision of economics. You will notice that how new money is created doesn’t seem to be in the mix. When they are fully in control of the reins of government, they believe that new ideas will come from those enlightened people in government. Oddly, they are deeply opposed to businessmen (or businesswomen) as oppressors of the workers, and insist on issuing more and more regulations to control the actions of business. They don’t like the free market, and don’t grasp the idea of the wisdom of the people and their free transactions in a free market as a source of innovation, wealth, and new ideas. They despise CEOs of large corporations. Those who serve in a proper Leftist government are the enlightened who control and regulate the rest.
They simply cannot comprehend that an increase in the minimum wage for beginning workers is an unemployment program for the least accomplished or rawest beginners. If you explain that McDonalds has announced their plan to install self serve kiosks across the country, they are indignant that a business would do such a thing. They cannot understand that lowering or removing corporate taxes is good for the economy because corporations don’t pay taxes. Taxes are simply a cost of doing business for a corporation, and it is the customers (you and me) who pay for it. When you don’t understand the basic rules of economics, you keep messing up, and the citizens are the ones who get hurt. What if it turns out that Trump is a good president? What will the Left do then?
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Blessings of Liberty, Brave New World, Fixing Human Nature
Why is free speech so hard to understand? Why is freedom so hard to understand? It has a lot to do with understanding human nature. Conservatives are big on freedom, but even they don’t always understand what it means. They see human nature as flawed, but do not expect perfection. We are greedy and rude, peaceful and warlike, lazy, hardworking, vain, stupid, brilliant and foolish. We make lots of mistakes, yet try to clean them up after we’ve made a mess. We admire things that turn out well, but don’t expect everything to do so. In general we recognize human nature as unchangeable, but believe that if left free to create and think and study, with a little encouragement things will mostly turn out alright. America has been an earth-changing laboratory of the benefits of freedom.
The Left — Democrats, Progressives, Liberals believe that human nature is a mess, but can be fixed. And that’s what they aim to do. With the right people in charge to make the right laws, mankind can be adjusted, and there will be no more inequality, nor discrimination, nor anything that offends. Everyone will at last be equal, and there will be no more hate and no more wars. Everyone will get along as soon as the Left has reached complete power and control, and put all the right edicts into force. It will all be wonderful, just you wait and see.
The problems of the world are caused by greed and jealousy, and that’s why it’s important to help the poor, succor the needy, and give everyone just enough stuff to keep them dependent on the government largess you have granted them. So the programs of the left are largely about manipulating the people. The Left does not accept human nature as fixed or immutable. That’s why they are so anxious to be put in charge — so they can go about the hard work of fixing everything. To fix things they really have to be in control, so they are constantly reaching out for more power. Leaving the people free —just isn’t in their vocabulary. There’s no telling what the people might do if not controlled.
Progressives regard their drive to make everyone equal as so morally superior that it should not be questioned. They do not understand why those who disagree with their position should not be silenced. Their ideas are right, their rules are needed, and their goals are indeed morally superior. If this seems to translate as smug, well, there you are. I give you Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Charles Schumer, and the list goes on.
Who would ever have conceived that the President of the United States and his new Attorney General should order that all Ladies Rooms now be opened to “all” genders, so that those men who “identify” as women should not be discriminated against? And if the nation’s schools do not immediately open the girls’ locker rooms and showers to those men who “identify” as women, then the federal government will take them to court and take away their federal funds. Matters of freedom and control are not just fanciful notions.
American Elephants 