Undermining Freedom

Reality having failed to conform to the revolutionary vision of the collectivists known as communists and socialists, they sought instead to destroy the culture of Western free society. We have visited this idea before in a Eric Raymond's post titled Gramscian Damage. Here I excerpt an article titled Cultural Marxism.

There are two misconceptions held by many Americans. The first is that communism ceased to be a threat when the Soviet Union imploded. The second is that the New Left of the Sixties collapsed and disappeared as well.

Because the New Left lacked cohesion it fell apart as a political movement. However, its revolutionaries reorganized themselves into a multitude of single issue groups.

Both communism and the New Left are alive and thriving here in America. They favor code words: tolerance, social justice, economic justice, peace, reproductive rights, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, inclusion, diversity, and sensitivity. All together, this is Cultural Marxism disguised as multiculturalism.

By the end of WWI, socialists realized that something was amiss, for the world's proletariat had not heeded Marx's call to rise up in opposition to evil capitalism and to embrace communism instead.

Separately, two Marxist theorists-Antonio Gramsci of Italy and Georg Lukacs of Hungary-concluded that the Christianized West was the obstacle standing in the way of a communist new world order. The West would have to be conquered first.

The West would have to be de-Christianized, said Gramsci, by means of a "long march through the culture."

The new battleground, reasoned Gramsci, must become the culture, starting with the traditional family and completely engulfing churches, schools, media, entertainment, civic organizations, literature, science, and history.

In 1923, the Frankfurt School-a Marxist think-tank-was founded in Weimar Germany. Among its founders were Georg Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno.

The primary goal of the Frankfurt School was to translate Marxism from economic terms into cultural terms. It would provide the ideas on which to base a new political theory of revolution based on culture, harnessing new oppressed groups for the faithless proletariat. Smashing religion, morals, It would also build a constituency among academics, who could build careers studying and writing about the new oppression.

The end product was Cultural Marxism, now known in the West as multiculturalism.

A corresponding and diabolically crafted idea is political correctness. The strong suggestion here is that in order for one not to be thought of as racist or fascist, then one must not only be nonjudgmental but must also embrace the ‘new' moral absolutes: diversity, choice, sensitivity, sexual orientation, and tolerance. Political correctness is a Machiavellian psychological ‘command and control' device. Its purpose is the imposition of uniformity in thought, speech, and behavior.

Critical Theory is an ongoing and brutal assault via vicious criticism relentlessly leveled against Christians, Christmas, the Boy Scouts, Ten Commandments, our military, and all other aspects of traditional American culture and society.

Both political correctness and Critical Theory are in essence, psychological bullying.

"... it is only necessary to display an inhuman attitude toward people to be granted by those people the possessions of force."


Double-thinking ‘fence-sitters', otherwise known as moderates, centrists, and RINOs bear the imprint of these psychological ‘obedience' techniques.


At the merest hint of displeasure from the obedience-trainers, up goes the yellow flag of surrender upon which it is boldly written:

"I believe in nothing and am tolerant of everything!"

The linchpin of Cultural Marxism is cultural determinism, the parent of identity politics and group solidarity.

It is said that courage is the first of the virtues because without it fear will paralyze man, thus keeping him from acting upon his moral convictions and speaking truth. Thus bringing about a general state of paralyzing fear, apathy, and submission-the chains of tyranny-is the purpose behind psychopolitical cultural terrorism, for the communist Left's revolutionary agenda must, at all costs, be clothed in darkness.

The antidote is courage and the light of truth. If we are to win this cultural war and reclaim and rebuild America so our children and their children's children can live in a ‘Shining City on the Hill' where liberty, families, opportunity, free markets, and decency flourish, we must muster the courage to fearlessly expose the communist Left's revolutionary agenda to the Light of Truth. Truth and the courage to speak it will set us free.

An interesting perspective can be had of this from a philosophical and historical view by reading Stephen Hicks book Explaining Postmodernism.
This from a review:

The socialist intellectuals were in a quandary. They ought rationally to have abandoned their views, since their doctrine was fallacious in theory and disastrous in practice; but rationality is not a trait much in evidence among the socialistically inclined. If reason speaks against socialism, is not the solution obvious: out with reason! If reason provides no access to reality, but is rather a mask for power, the critique of socialism is disabled.

How, though, can socialists claim that reason is relative and at the same time aver an absolute belief in socialist politics? Are they not here caught in a contradiction that even they cannot dismiss? Hicks finds plausible two explanations of the contradiction. On one account, "absolutist politics are primary, while the relativism is a rhetorical strategy that is used to advance that politics"; on the other, "both the relativism and the absolutism coexist in postmodernism, but the contradictions between them simply do not matter psychologically to those who hold them" (p. 185). Hicks rejects the view that relativism is primary and the politics secondary. If it were true, "then postmodernists would be adopting political positions across the spectrum, and that is simply not happening" (p. 186).

Choose freedom or choose your flavor of tranny!

See also this diagram from the book of attempts to rescue socialist thought from failure. Of course Postmodernism and it's epistemological deadend are alive in academia but this book about Michael Polanyi is helpful for someone wishing to reconnect with reality.

Also, a book I will comment on more in the future, White Guilt by Shelby Steele, makes the observation that there is a growing opposition to this undermining of the culture from people with a renewed confidence in more traditional beliefs. Well, one can hope.

Enemies of the Poor

I'm glad to see this fine documentary getting some attention. I have a copy and in my view it is very well done.

The rhetorical overkill of the response was telling: The environmental movement is clearly afraid of this film, and it should be. Mine Your Own Business, Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer’s clear-eyed look at the true impacts of mining and the nefarious tactics of its opponents, exposes the self-satisfied delusions of the environmental Left, putting lie to a host of deadly, anti-growth canards and revealing the smug elitism of many green advocates.

This is, perhaps, not all that surprising. The ideas espoused by many greens are farcical enough to begin with. But even for someone used to their whoppers, it’s almost shocking the lies, misrepresentations, and condescending behavior that McAleeny manages to catch on film. With great care and thoroughness, the movie deconstructs the Left’s anti-growth narrative of pastoral tranquility and replaces it with something truly shocking: actual local sentiment.

Environmentalists, of course, talk endlessly about preserving traditional ways of life, but locals don’t want to preserve poverty and hardship. They want a chance to provide a more comfortable existence for themselves and their families. McAleer catches Francoise Heidebroek, who works with an anti-mining NGO, claiming that Rosia Montana residents would “prefer to ride a horse than drive a car.” When McAleer asks locals if they’d prefer to clop about in freezing temperatures on a horse, they just laugh at him.

But Heidobroek’s wistful fantasies about poverty are nothing compared to those of the World Wildlife Fund’s Mark Fenn. Fenn opposes a proposed mine in Fort Dauphin, Madagascar on the grounds that it would destroy “the quaintness, the small-town feeling” that he so admires.

When asked why locals should be denied the economic opportunity that would come with the mine, he calmly explains that, although they might not have terribly good healthcare, or shelter, or nutrition, they have a stress-free life that can be valued by — I kid you not — the number of times they smile per day. Even if they did get money, he explains, they wouldn’t know how to spend it. As he tells it, they tend to blow their cash on parties, booze, and stereo systems.

Fenn’s attitude isn’t just witless, it’s sickening, and it’s indicative of the general level of smug, out-of-touch elitism that haunts the environmental movement. “Regional character,” “simple life,” “quaintness,” “small-town feeling,” “local history” — these are just warm, fuzzy phrases trotted out by anti-growth environmentalists to deny wealth and opportunities to residents of poor regions. And, as in Fenn’s case, they’re often markers of ugly condescension toward third-world residents.

Most of the world's poor want the opportunity for a better life. They don't need an ugly eco-imperialism that operates against their own wishes!

An Aspect of Defending Freedom

I've found through much experience that there is no substitute for doing the homework. Whether that involves sourcing and cross-checking data, making sense of an explanation or being aware of relevant items in order to better characterize historical events. In that light, I found this Ken Blackwell article rather intrigueing.

Second Amendment Freedoms Aided the Civil Rights Movement

Prominent and indispensable among our rights is the "right of the people to keep and bear arms." Second Amendment rights, never to be infringed, were posited by our nation’s founders as among the most essential tenets of the free and just republic they sought to establish.

As the nation reflects on the struggles and achievements of our African-American citizens, we must celebrate the actions of heroic civil rights activists known as the Deacons for Defense. In the fight for equality, these brave men utilized their right to bear arms to protect their families, possessions and liberties.

In his 2004 book, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement, Tulane University history professor Lance Hill tells their story. Hill writes of how a group of southern working class black men advanced civil rights through direct action to protect members of local communities against harassment at schools and polling places, and to thwart the terror inflicted by the Ku Klux Klan. He argues that without the Deacon’s activities the civil rights movement may have come to a crashing halt.

As legendary civil rights leader Roy Innis recently said to me, the Deacons forced the Klan to re-evaluate their actions and often change their undergarments.

That gun rights have played such a pivotal role in racial equality makes the historical correlation between gun control and discriminatory policies unsurprising. From their beginnings, gun control measures have worked to create legal disparities, granting unequal rights to members of various socioeconomic groups.

In fact, restrictive gun laws have long been employed to the benefit of a select elite while circumscribing the liberty of populations less popular or less powerful.

As Gun Owners of America President Larry Platt shared with me this summer and wrote in 2004 regarding the Deacons, the history of gun control appears to have been one of controlling people rather than reducing violence.

Examining both our nation’s constitution and the history of gun rights in America, the right to keep and bear arms has been at the forefront of our nation’s march to liberty and equality. The Second Amendment, which empowers Americans to embrace all of the freedoms and responsibilities their citizenship entails, has been the catalyst of tremendous social progress. While some may dismiss the centrality of gun ownership to “progressive” ideals, groups such as the Deacons for Defense have shown us that a citizenry understanding of their rights to bear arms is one likely to understand and defend our basic civil rights and the principles of equality and freedom.

Amen Brother!!

From the comments section after the article:

It isn't Hollywood, but I've made a movie which has a large segment on the right to arms, the civil right struggle, and the Deacons. See http://www.secondamendmentdocumentary.com .

Savings Rate

At the personal level, savings is about deferring some consumption into the future. Say for retirement. Some individuals may not be saving enough for their own future benefit. On a national or aggregate level it's supposed to be about providing material for investment in future production. I'm not going to get into arguements about the validity of that statement now. What I have noticed over many years is that even with the reported savings rate dropping, there is still plenty of investment in this country from both domestic and foreign sources. You can waste time worrying if you wish, not me! So did you see the headlines last week?

"Savings rate at level similar to Depression"

"2006 Personal Savings Fall to 74-Yr. Low"

Really?

Or maybe not:

It seems the media and even some economists who should know better have no problem pushing the panic button over any data that suggest the economy is struggling — but studiously ignore anything that suggests we're actually thriving economically.

So it is with the savings rate. Each time it's announced, a round of tut-tutting is heard from pundits, economics wonks and policy-makers about how Americans are "spendthrifts" and "just don't save enough."

To which we answer: Nonsense. Indeed, the savings rate is one of the least useful pieces of data issued on our economy.

We've saved plenty, as shown on the accompanying charts. In the fourth quarter, we had amassed $1.8 trillion in gross savings — more than enough to fund the estimated $1.43 trillion in private nonresidential investment we made.

How could savings be so high when we're constantly told it's at Depression-era lows? Easy. The scare stories focus solely on personal savings, failing to take into account the savings of households, businesses and government. When those are added in, we have an enormous amount of money at our disposal.

Those who say a low savings rate is bad for individual households are correct. Problem is, there's no evidence Americans aren't saving much. Rather, the "savings rate" doesn't capture what they save.

But if savings doesn't matter, what does? In a word, wealth.

Net wealth — the total value of all assets, including stocks, bonds, bank accounts, houses and retirement funds, after subtracting debt — is about $54 trillion, up a hefty $16 trillion since President Bush cut taxes in mid-2003. If you divide that $54 trillion by America's 114 million or so households, you get an average net worth of roughly $474,000.

So you can see why Americans aren't putting away money at the end of the month from disposable income. They don't need to. Or they're already doing it but it isn't measured.

So stop worrying about the plunging personal savings rate. The game's not about accumulating savings; it's about building wealth — something we Americans are very, very good at.

Don't worry, be happy!

hat tip: Will Franklin

More Deficit Shrinkage

The trend of a shrinking federal budget deficit has been in place for awhile. Now only the blind can't see it...

Politicians are typically late in picking up trends, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes Washington to acknowledge the big story in the Fiscal 2008 budget that President Bush unveiled yesterday: To wit, with a little spending restraint, Congress could balance the budget in no time.

...over the past three years the federal deficit has shrunk by 58%. The Congressional Budget Office--not the White House--is estimating that the current year's deficit (for fiscal 2007) will fall to $172 billion. That's not bad given continuing Katrina relief spending, $30 billion for homeland security, and a couple hundred billion or so to fight the war on terror.

The other news you won't often hear concerns the soaring tax revenues in the wake of the 2003 supply-side tax cuts. Tax collections have risen by $757 billion, among the largest revenue gushers in history. Receipts, especially from high-income individuals and corporations, have been growing for some two years at nearly twice the rate of spending, which explains the falling deficit. Economic growth is always the key to eliminating red ink, which is why keeping this 63-month expansion rolling needs to be the main domestic priority.

These trends have been tracked here as well.

If keeping the expansion ontrack is what we seek, this might be worth contemplating.

I guess if I suffered from BDS then it would be easy to chalk this up to the actions of the jobs and prosperity fairy, but we've seen this movie before. The good economic record happens every time tax rates on capital formation are reduced, just like the 1997 capital gains tax reduction.

UPDATE: Thought this John Ray post was a good followup.

Nearly all of the conventional wisdom about the Bush tax cuts is wrong. In reality:

* The tax cuts have not substantially reduced cur-rent tax revenues, which were in fact not far from the 2000 pre-tax cut baseline and over the 2003 pre-tax cut baseline in 2006;
* The increased child tax credit, 10 percent tax bracket, and fix of the alternative minimum tax (AMT) reduced tax revenues much more than most of the "tax cuts for the rich";
* Economic growth rates have more than doubled since the 2003 tax cuts; and
* The tax cuts shifted even more of the income tax burden toward the rich.

Setting optimal tax policy requires governing with facts rather than popular mythology, which is why it is important to set the record straight by debunking 10 myths about the Bush tax cuts.

Property, Liberty and Justice

"Where there is no property there is no justice" John Locke

A subject which brings us to this post at Don Luskin's blog:

BRAD DELONG'S CONCEPTION OF PROPERTY RIGHTS From a column by Jabba the Economist in the Miami Herald:

Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer and the other millionaires and billionaires of Microsoft are brilliant, hardworking, entrepreneurial and justly wealthy. But only the first 5 percent of their wealth can be justified as an economic incentive to encourage entrepreneurship and enterprise. The next 95 percent would create much more happiness and opportunity if it were divided evenly among U.S. citizens or others than if they were to consume any portion of it.

So the entitlement that hard-working Americans can claim to the fruits of their labors requires being "justified" on the grounds of incentives? How about "justifying" it on the grounds of freedom? What possible argument in favor of stripping away property rights can come from Brad DeLong's opinion, or anyone else's, that some fraction of those fruits would make other people happier than it makes its creators? I am most assuredly not concerned with the happiness it gives Brad DeLong to appoint himself the arbiter of everyone else's happiness, and to imagine the thrill of the power that would come with deciding how everything should be distributed to maximize that happiness. Let DeLong create something of value for once in his life, and let him be in charge of distributing that.

Thanks to reader Mike Mitchell for the link.

Update... a reader who asks for anonymity thinks the headline for this post should have been "Brad DeLong's Conception of Calorie Rights," and he suggests the following rewrite:

Brad DeLong and other overweight economists earn good money from public institutions and are big eaters and obese. But only the first 50 percent of their calories can be justified as a dietary requirement for healthy living. The other 50 percent would create much more happiness and opportunity if it were provided to starving U.S. citizens or others than if they were to consume any portion of it.

Update 2 [2/2/2007]... Reader Forbes Tuttle makes a good observation:

In taking up the subject of the Microsoft Millionaires, but especially the billions of Gates, Allen, and Ballmer, whose wealth is a result of the appreciation of Microsoft's market capitalization, DeLong is proposing the policy of a 95% tax on capital (wealth). As class warfare, this may get some juices flowing, but as economic policy, this puts DeLong's party--the Democrats--in league with Karl Marx, who preferred 100% of the capital to be in the hands of the state. As regards the consequences of such a policy, I'd suggest DeLong's 95% tax on wealth is a distinction without a difference, when compared to Marx's 100% state control.

On this matter I would like to present both moral and practical aspects. An post in the Market Center Blog states this:

First, the socialist candidate for the French presidency accuses Switzerland of "looting" its neighbor. But this implies that individuals belong to the government and that they do not have the individual freedom and sovereignty to choose where they want to live. Second, the European Union's Ambassador to Switzerland argues that low tax rates are a subsidy. This argument implies that income belongs to government and it creates a moral equivalence between an interest group that seeks to seize other people's wealth through the political process and taxpayers who merely want to keep more of their own money.

Along a similar vein Perry Eidelbus includes this at his blog:

As Walter Williams has said, "No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong." This thinking originated in Bastiat's The Law, in which he declared, "When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it—without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud—to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed."

Make a practice of taking away outsized gains, under any justification you wish, and see how much risk taking and progress remains... bright energetic people will focus on taking existing wealth rather than creating new wealth. They might team up with ruthless types to help them hold on to what they can or they will just leave the country.

Also, would you rather see private and social entreprenuers tackle tough problems with their wealth or place it in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats?