Friday, January 2, 2015

MIXED BAGDems spend no matter what the tax policies.

THE REAL SKINNY ON POLICINGFor those interested in the facts, this article is for you.

INDIVIDUALISM VS COLLECTIVISM:  But he forgot to mention the original "experiment" in failed socialism: the the pilgrims colony at Plymouth, Ma., in the 17th century.

The Origins of "Individualism"

by Robert Tracinski

Editor's Note; I'll be back on Monday with some new articles, but in the meantime, I wanted to draw your attention to a few more items in my "best of" selection from the pieces I published in 2014. In the next few days, I'm going to send some of the more philosophical articles I wrote, including this short one from June about the origins of "individualism"--the word, and the idea. It opens up an under-appreciated field that I'd like to explore a little bit more in the coming year: America's pre-20-century experiments with socialism, a doctrine that ought have been exploded and exposed long ago, but which instead failed upward.There are also the last few days for our Holiday Sale, so take advantage of it while it lasts.--RWT

Objectivists get used to hearing something like this every once in a while, so it didn't surprise me when I read the following in an article by a colleague:

"The number of true individualists is still relatively small.... If you buy or sell things, consume popular culture, or have anyone in your life you say 'I love you' to, you’re not a true individualist."

Answering this is Objectivism 101 and by now you presumably have the proper retort already forming in the back of your mind. Individualism is not the same thing as being a hermit. Living for yourself doesn't mean living by yourself. Heck, this might even be a variant of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
But in thinking about this, it struck me that the answer goes even deeper. A hermit or someone stranded on a desert island, someone with no connection to other people, would not need the concept of individualism. There would be nothing to contrast it to. He would do things by himself and for himself because there are no other options. The concept of individualism is necessary and meaningfulonly for someone living in a society, someone who is buying and selling, someone with romantic and family relationships, someone who is engaged with the culture around him (though frankly, "consuming popular culture" is pretty optional).
It is only someone living in a society who faces the temptation or the pressure (depending on his psychology) to subordinate his own judgment to the standards of others, or to sacrifice his own interests for others. Or to put the issue in more positive terms, it is only when people live together that they have to find a way to pursue their interests in harmony, recognizing the freedom of the individual to come to his own conclusions and choose his own goals.
So in thinking about this, I wondered where the terms "individualist" and "individualism" came from. I had the sense that they are modern terms. You don't find them in Classical philosophy, or even in the great thinkers of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. America's Founding Fathers were among history's greatest advocates of individual rights, yet they never described themselves as "individualists." So my guess was that "individualism" as a term arose only in response to that other modern invention, "collectivism." Collectivist ideas have a long history--see Plato's Republic--but collectivism did not exist as a named, explicit philosophy until relatively recently.
A quick look at the etymology of "individualism" confirms this. Like "capitalism," it is a term coined by its enemies--the very same enemies, as a matter of fact. Individualism was first used by early socialists, specifically the "Owenites," followers of a utopian socialist by the name of Robert Owen, who made a fortune in the textile industry in Britain, then blew it funding a utopian community in New Harmony, Indiana. We tend to think of the 20th century as the world's great experiment with socialism, but throughout the 19th Century, Britain and the United States were dotted with voluntary experiments in socialism, usually based on a grand plan devised by some charismatic theorist. What they mostly have in common is that they collapse within a few years, usually when their wealthy patron--who made his money in the burgeoning industrial economy of capitalism--either burns through his fortune or dies. That's the tragedy of 20th-century socialism: it was a totally unnecessary experiment, since the basic concept had already failed for more than a century in repeated small-scale trials.
At any rate, it was at the time of these early 19th-century experiment, in the late 1820s and 1830s (different sources give different dates) that the word "socialism" first comes into common use. (The variant "communism" comes a little later, in the 1840s.) At that same time, "individualism" is first used, most sources say in 1827, as a pejorative term to describe what the socialists were against. The Wikipedia entry notes that one of the disillusioned Owenites (his name is now quite obscure) would go on to embrace private property and begin using "individualism" in a positive sense, setting the trend for how the term would come to be used by many, more famous champions later on.
So there, in the very origins of the word, is a refutation of the crude misconception about individualism. The very concept of individualism could not have been formed outside of society. It arose, not from a desire to avoid relationships with other people, but from the need to describe those relationship in a way that recognizes the value of the individual and his need for freedom, as opposed to a new and growing philosophy that sought to subordinate the individual to society and the state.












The fact that the term for such a valuable concept was coined by its enemies, as was also true of "capitalism," is ironic. But that's another lesson we can draw from this history: a reminder of how we will find the important concepts we need to defend freedom and civilization--even if we have to wrest those concepts away from the very people who originated them.

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

THE FINAL AND BEST WORD ON THE SUBJECTThis is the conversation that we should be having bu won't. Too many people profit from black poverty.

NOTE THE DATE OF THIS ARTICLE:This is a 2005 article that ends optimistically. Clearly, based on recent events, that optimism is wildly misplaced. This problem is so discouraging largely because it is enveloped in the sickening pathologies of the left.  Since black dependency is now at least a trillion dollar industry there's no reforming possible until the money pot dries up.  We're probably not too far from that circumstance at this time.

THIS IS HOW IT WORKS IN RUSSIA THE USA THESE DAYS:

How Al Sharpton Got His Own TV Show

Al Sharpton is generally regarded as a piece of scum — a tax-dodging socialist and professional race baiter who has gotten numerous people killed in pogroms. (For those not familiar with his worst outrages against decency, Ben Shapiro provides a quick rundown.) Sharpton is not regarded by anyone as a gifted television anchor. Yet he has his own prime time show on MSNBC. The reason could have something to do with Comcast wanting to merge with NBC, which in the USSA requires the approval of bureaucrats. Fortunately for crony capitalists, these bureaucrats can be bribed. Via Washingtonian:

To rally political support for the merger, Comcast’s political-action committee handed out campaign cash, and [well-connected political fixer David] Cohen worked to head off the concerns over diversity [i.e., complaints that people were being promoted based on merit rather than for not being white]. Between 2008 and 2010, Comcast’s corporate foundation donated more than $3 million to 39 minority groups that wrote letters to federal regulators in support of the NBC deal. Comcast and NBC Universal also worked out an agreement with advocacy groups guaranteeing increased “minority participation in news and public affairs programming”—so long as the deal went through. And in 2009 and 2010, Comcast gave $155,000 to an organization founded by the Reverend Al Sharpton, who ended up endorsing the merger.

Like Jesse Jackson, Sharpton has made a fortune by putting himself it a position to determine what is and is not “racist.” Sharpton’s position in this regard is particularly lucrative due to hisexceedingly close relationship with Obama.

Western Journalism elaborates on the merger deal:

In January, 2011, Washington approved the deal. And lo and behold, Al Sharpton — who had virtually no professional broadcast experience but did have a long history of legal entanglements and ethical quandaries — landed a prime-time show on MSNBC.

Not only would Reverend Al have the kind of “legitimate” pulpit from which he could pontificate with an assumed air of “credibility,” he could also enjoy a reboot of sorts — a network-sanctioned passage out of the shadow of his past troubles.

And Obama’s White House could have its loyal advocate and ally in place to carry forward the narrative five nights a week.

Now, no matter how deeply Sharpton inserts himself into and tries to influence raging racial controversies…no matter how much criticism is directed his way…no matter how many goofs and gaffes he racks up on his show, Sharpton seems to be a protected entity.

He can even help get police officers assassinated without damaging his career. On the contrary, his presence probably lends credibility to MSNBC in the addled minds of the moonbats who are now its exclusive audience. Everyone else has been driven away not only by the channel’s demented hard left politics, but by the ever-deteriorating level of broadcast professionalism.

Behold the ruinous effects of Affirmative Action combined with cronyism:

On

Monday, December 29, 2014

CRONY CAPITALISM IS NOT CAPITALISM.These people have no shame. It has to stop.

THIS COMMENTARY WILL NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAYAnd it's a shame as it gets at the root of the problem.

RACE HUSTLERS ON THIN ICEThe reaction to Sharpton and co. is beginning. About time.

COBURN IS A GOOD REPRESENTATIVE OF THE PEOPLEI'd like to think he had better judgment about character, however.  As much good work Coburn did in the matter of earmarks, nothing will fundamentally change regarding over spending until we have a balanced budget amendment that can only be bridged in a wartime emergency ( meaning an attack by a foreign power).  This is so fundamental it is hard to see why we cannot get it passed other than those in power don't want any restrictions on their ability to tax and spend what they judge to be necessary.  Meanwhile we have a deficit of 18 trillion unfunded liabilities four times that, and no prospect for coding the gap.  This is why we are doomed to a collapse in the value of the currency and all that follows that.

DOESN'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT CAPITALISM, EH?Talk about living in a cocoon of real world ignorance.  Pope might start by distributing much of the wealth of the church to poor people.  After that he might try educating himself on economics beginning with Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations".  What's wrong with sticking to theological matters?

Pope Francis Delves Deeper Into Leftist Politics by Pushing Global Warming Hoax

You know the Catholic Church is in trouble when the left-wing Guardian refers to Francis as the “superman pope.” He didn’t earn this dubious honor just by brokering Obama’s embrace of the communist slave state in Cuba. He has promoted state-inflicted poverty by attacking economic freedom and is now pushing the global warming hoax:

In 2015, the pope will issue a lengthy message on the subject to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, give an address to the UN general assembly and call a summit of the world’s main religions.

The reason for such frenetic activity, says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, is the pope’s wish to directly influence next year’s crucial UN climate meeting in Paris, when countries will try to conclude 20 years of fraught negotiations with a universal commitment to reduce emissions.

Reducing emissions reduces our standard of living. It does not reduce temperatures, as if they needed reducing. The global warming hoax has already been definitively debunked. According to the bogus theory it is based on, skyrocketing carbon emissions should result in corresponding temperatures. Yet temperatures have remained level for the past 18 years.

Nonetheless, the hoax is still seen as useful by those with hard left political agendas, who see it as a pretext to impose oligarchical collectivist authoritarianism. Except during extreme weather events that will happen no matter what, these power grabbers do not have the climate on their side. But they do have the Pope.

Following a visit in March to Tacloban, the Philippine city devastated in 2012 by typhoon Haiyan, the pope will publish a rare encyclical on climate change and human ecology. Urging all Catholics to take action on moral and scientific grounds, the document will be sent to the world’s 5,000 Catholic bishops and 400,000 priests, who will distribute it to parishioners.

According to Vatican insiders, Francis will meet other faith leaders and lobby politicians at the general assembly in New York in September, when countries will sign up to new anti-poverty and environmental goals.

It is no accident that the “anti-poverty” (i.e., anti-capitalism) and environmental goals are mentioned together. Free market capitalism has done vastly more to lift people out of poverty than any other system in history. Consequently, destroying it so as to replace it with Soviet-style serfdom requires more than just tired and empty rhetoric about the poor, who will be far more numerous and far more poor if leftists are able to prevent the creation of wealth.

In recent months, the pope has argued for a radical new financial and economic system to avoid human inequality and ecological devastation. In October he told a meeting of Latin American and Asian landless peasants and other social movements: “An economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it.

“The system continues unchanged, since what dominates are the dynamics of an economy and a finance that are lacking in ethics. It is no longer man who commands, but money. Cash commands.

“The monopolising of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness,” he said.

It is hard to say who would applaud this sophomoric rhetoric more enthusiastically: Al Gore or Karl Marx.

Note the emphasis on “human inequality.” People cannot be both equal and free, at least not in an economic sense. Holding everyone but the unavoidable ruling elite to a lowest common denominator has never increased the standard of living for the masses and never will.

The days of Jean Paul II confronting communist tyranny have never been more missed.

The cheering leftists at the Guardian refer to “Francis’s environmental radicalism.” Given its explicit elevation of the nonhuman over the human, there has never been a more un-Christian ideology than environmental radicalism. The Pope praising the Devil would not be more appalling.

People of weak faith believe that Christianity needs to get with the times or become obsolete. This will not be accomplished by chaining the Catholic Church to a hoax that an increasing percentage of the population can see through to its malevolent authoritarian objectives.

ARE COMMUNISTS BEHIND DEMONSTRATIONS?  This flier suggests yes!

Helter Skelter 2014

The contrived Black Lives Matter protests have many people wondering what exactly the moonbats on the street and those pulling their strings are trying to accomplish.

The string pullers — meaning the Obama Administration and the liberal media kingpins who put it in power — want a distraction from the failure of Obama’s presidency, a tightened focus on the cultural Marxist blacks-as-sacred-victims narrative, and most ominously, to extend federal control over local police, which is a prerequisite to imposing a police state.

No doubt there is more behind the Alinskyite tactics than we are cynical enough even to imagine. But when it comes to the wackos actually out there on the streets demanding dead cops, we don’t have to imagine. Some are unskilled enough as revolutionaries to actually tell us their objectives.

After a recent anti-police riot in the San Francisco area, Zombie saw a flyer in the subway that spells it right out for us:

It was made by the Revolutionary Communist Party, one of several communist groups that have been leading the protests and going all-out to ignite a race war in the aftermath of the Mike Brown and Eric Garner incidents.

Click for full size (sorry about the language):

By “revolution,” they mean the imposition of a totalitarian communist slave state along the lines of Cuba, North Korea, or the Soviet Union. Insane as it may seem, there are many people who want this to happen, and some of them hold very powerful positions in the government and media.

Speaking of insane, Charles Manson’s master plan was to foment a race war in which blacks would rise up violently against American society. After whites who sided with the rampaging blacks and whites who tried to defend civilization had killed each other off, Manson would step in to rule the ruins, which blacks would welcome once they discovered they were not capable of governing themselves.

Maybe Charles Manson has been directing the whole Michael Brown/Eric Garner/Black Lives Matter spectacle from his prison cell. In a world where Barack Hussein Obama is the President of the USA, anything is possible.

PC MADNESS RAMPANT: This is all getting beyond parody and iint the realm of outrageous.

Brandeis Moonbats Stand With Khadijah Lynch

A little follow-up on Khadijah Lynch, the Undergraduate Department Representative in the African and Afro-American Studies Department at Brandeis University who took to Twitter with obscenity-laden, barely literate bursts of bile celebrating the execution of New York City police officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.

Lynch resigned her position after Brandeis Daniel Mael drew attention to her outrageous statements on Truth Revolt. Now it is Mael who is in hot water — with other students:

On Monday, a throng of angry Brandeis students criticized Mael. Some suggested that the Brandeis administration should punish him for citing Lynch’s public tweets.

Brandeis senior Michael Piccione, a member of the 2014-15 student conduct board, sent an urgent email to the president of Brandeis, senior administrators, radical leftist professors and students.

The email — entitled “VERY IMPORTANT: Holding Daniel Mael accountable, and other threats to student safety!” — claimed that “Mael has exposed Khadijah to the largely white supremacist following of the website.” (The website to which Piccione refers is Truth Revolt.)

Truth Revolt is the brainchild of its Editor in Chief Ben Shapiro, an orthodox Jew. You might think his notable accomplishments would be appreciated at traditionally Jewish Brandeis. Yet Truth Revolt no doubt qualifies as a neo-Nazi website in the addled minds of liberal students, who would like anyone associated with it to be silenced for being “racist.”

Piccione isn’t the only intellectual brownshirt to come down on Mael for blowing the whistle:

On the Brandeis Class of 2017 OFFICIAL page, a closed Facebook group, sophomore William Amara has written: “I am sorry that Khadijah has to put up with these f**ing ***holes publishing (and likely distorting) her private opinions to further incite racial hatred and oppression. I hope the university will stand with you if these ****suckers cause things to escalate further.”

You see the level of intellect and civility we “racists” are up against.

These students deserve pats on the head for faithfully regurgitating what their professors have been feeding them.

In the summer, Mael uncovered a huge listserv used by Brandeis professors containing several scary exchanges bashing conservatives, Jews and Christians. In one email, sociology professor Gordon Fellman shared an article suggesting that the Boston bombers were not motivated by an anti-American doctrine of Islamism, but instead driven by poverty and “cruel anti-immigrant policies of both Presidents Bush and Obama.”

Not even Obama is enough of a moonbat in academic loony-land.

At over $60,000 per year, tuition, fees, room, and board at Brandeis cost more than the median American household income. Whoever is paying for this is getting screwed.

Khadijah Lynch, prog princess.

THERE'S DEFINITELY SOMETHING WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE!

Why has this race pimp visited the WH over 80 times?

IT'S NOT AS THOUGH THEY'RE RACISTS OR ANYTHING


A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS: