Everything costs something

Is there's an observer on the socio-political scene with more useful insights than Theodore Dalrymple? In this brief column he dissects the problem with socialism/communism/fascism with a real life experience he had some 20 years ago while visiting North Korea.  It's inconceivable to us in the West that the kind of existence Dalrymple describes can be the case and yet we know it is throughout the Middle East, Africa, and the Far East.  And yet one senses that a version of this existence is where the Obama forces would eventually take us.  Freedom is a slippery slope and giving it up via Obamacare here, Cap and Trade there inevitably leads to dominance of the state and the enslavement of its populace who then become subjects.  Something, anything for nothing has a compelling appeal to many who would do well to remember that there really are no free lunches and that everything costs something even if its free.

A critical election

Both the DNC and GOP conventions are history.  After a few days (hours?) of post mortems the candidates will be hitting the campaign trail for the last sixty days of what seems an interminably long, painful process.  Painful because of all the lies and distortions oneness to wade through to decide who has the best path forward for the country. It should be clear to just about everyone that Obama's policies over the past four years have not worked, in fact, cannot work.  One would expect him to offer a different set of policies for the next four years.  Surprisingly in his convention speech he chose instead to simply ask for more time for his policies to finish the job.  Since most of his policies are have been tried in Europe and in outright socialist countries over and over and have always failed, it does seem a bit cheeky for him to ask the citizens for more time to prove he's right.  However, since the welfare state policies and programs of the past 75 years have created a huge constituency of dependents, and given that the Democrat Party has more or less perfected the ability to promote and pander to these voters, he stands a pretty good chance of reelection.  His election will take the country further along the road to socialism and the inevitable ruin that social order produces.  Romney's election, on the other hand,  providing he makes good on the reforms needed to get us back to a more honest, free enterprise capitalism, should provide the course correction desperately needed.  Four more years of Obama and his crown should just about be the right amount of time to turn our economy into the basket case economies we now see in Europe.  This is an important election.

The occupiers, Harvard freshmen, and Tea Party

The Occupy Wall Street movement is winding down largely because adults in the cities where they have been taking place have had enough.  Initially, at least, Obama and the democrats were supportive of (and may even have helped organize) the movement until it proved to be an unfocused, inchoate amalgam of malcontents, homeless, and grab bag of young throw backs to the '60's hippies.   Once it became clear the movement had degenerated all but the union support was nowhere to be seen.  There are, however,  some who still buy into the movement, despite its demise, and not surprisingly they emanate from an elite school in the northeast, Harvard.  In this article the immature mind of college freshmen (women) is on full display.  In support of the occupy movement freshmen students in an introductory Econ 101 class at Harvard, taught by the well known and highly regarded economist Nicholas G. Mankiw, decided to stage a "walk out" in protest against the "conservative" bias of the professor and also in support of the occupiers and their various causes and demands. This decision was  no doubt based on the freshmen's vast life experiences and store of knowledge.   Any rational administration would immediately refund these students' fees, tell them Harvard's not for them and offer their positions in the freshman class to someone who wants to earn a degree from the school based upon the curriculum offered in its course catalogue.  The students who walked out of Mr. Mankiw's course must have slipped through the admission process somehow since they failed to read and/or understand the Harvard syllabus prior to matriculation.  To state the obvious: The time for these students to object to a professor or course is not after having been accepted by the school and in turn having themselves accepted the offer to join the student body.  The administration should advise them that since they are not smart enough to do their homework on the kind of education Harvard offers, they are simply not Harvard material, and add that they might be happier out there with the occupiers camped out in some park rather than disrupting classes and those who want to learn.


On related front, the idea that the "occupy" movement is a construct of the democrat party and its main supporters (Moveon.org, unions, etc) stems from the success of the Tea Party movement.  Because the democrats were insanely jealous of the impact of the Tea Party on the 2010 mid-term elections and its effectiveness in turning public opinion agains Obamacare and the rest of the liberal agenda, they had to have some kind of galvanizing movement of their own.  Voila, occupy Wall Street.  While the Tea Party rightly focused on the corruption of the political process by both political parties (mostly democrats), its demands centered on reforming Washington and big government as the solution.  On the other hand, the occupy movement focusses solely on the evils of capitalism and it surrogate, Wall Street bankers.  One can make a pretty good case that what we are witnessing here is a shootout between Socialism and Capitalism as the way forward for our country.  Since there is ample evidence that socialism simply does not work, and lots of evidence that free markets and capitalism have provided all the wealth and material progress mankind has made over many centuries, there is little doubt which of these two isms should win this argument.  The 2012 election will determine the way forward.

More on Hayek

Powerline's new regular contributor Steve Hayward turns out to be a Friedrich Hayek acolyte which accounts for his refreshing common sense on matters economic and in general.  In this post Hayward quotes Hayek on the subject of the indivisibility of freedom and how liberals try to compartmentalize it into that of speech and economic activity, supporting the former and regulating the latter.  As Hayward points out, Hayek condemns this position as a contradiction which accounts for the liberals embrace of collectivism and socialism over the years.  The indivisibility of these two freedoms. if you will, goes to the heart of the Austrian's school of economics.

Unrest in Israel

An Israeli friend recently pointed out that the middle class unrest in Israel was a dangerous development with potentially disrupting consequences for that fledgling democracy.  He gave several reasons which did not comport with those in this analysis by Ran Baratz.  If one believes the Baratz analysis the problem is the incomplete transition from a socialist state to a free market economy begun a decade or so ago by Netanyahu when he was the Finance Director in Stone's cabinet.  Among the reasons for the unrest given by the Israeli friend was the polarization of wealth into the hands of a few families and the fact that costs of housing was almost prohibitively high.

Obama -- an analysis via the Claremont Institute

How to get the truth about Obama's past and his socialist roots, which are deep and wide, is the key to defeating him in 2012.  As can be seen from this Claremont Institute series here, much of Obama's past was disguised during and since the last election, but in the meantime there have been a number of books written that actually shed some light on who this guy is and where he comes from.  To expand on this information and get it out to the public at large is going to be a very big challenge, however it can and must be done otherwise he continues on for another four years doing grave harm to what's left of the Republic.  The Powerline link here provides further access to other important articles and reviews of books that have dealthwith aspects of The One's life.  All of the information available on these sites and through these links should be required reading for anyone who intends to vote in the next election.  Also everyone should be aware that the Communists, just like the Muslims, consider lying to further the interest of each's goals, to be not only justified, but smart policy.  That's why digging out the truth and exposing ist to the public is so crucial.  We can be subjugated to this vile philosophy if we don't react to the lies being perptrated about Obama and his cohorts and where the really want to take this country.  Beware!