Posts Tagged ‘Mark Steyn’
Statist Illusions (Mark Steyn)
Great column in the National Review Online (NRO) by Mark Steyn. I’m currently reading Steyn’s latest book, After America. Scary, to say the least.
For the full NRO piece, click here. Leave your comments below!
Highlights:
Broke nations are being bailed out by a broke transnational organization bankrolled by a broke superpower in order to save a broke currency. Good luck with that.
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The “you’re not on your own” societal model of Western Europe has run out of people to stick it to.
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America “invests” more per student than any other nation except Switzerland, and it has nothing to show for it other than a vast swamp of mediocrity presided over by a hideous educrat monopoly.
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These are dangerous times — and, as many will discover, whatever assurances the statists give, in the end you’ll be on your own.
For the full piece, click here. Check out Steyn’s new book, After America. I’m reading it now. It’s scary, but you need to know what’s going on.
Please comment below and/or on Facebook!
Tocqueville (1840) writes about ObamaCare. How did he know? (Spooky!)
In 1840, Alexis de Tocqueville (perhaps channeling his inner George Will) wondered what despotism in a republic such as ours might look like:
I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls. …
Over these is elevated an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. It is absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle. It would resemble the paternal power if, like that power, it had as its object to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, to the contrary, to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood … it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs….
The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute, and uniform—through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way … it does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting on one’s own … it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
Welcome to 2011. How did he know? He wrote this in his famous work, Of Democracy in America. Why is this not required reading for every American school child? Anwer: Because educated, thinking, freedom-loving citizens are antithetical to the Number One goal of the political class, which is to consolidate political power, that’s why.
Last week, George Will (perhaps channeling his inner Tocqueville) wrote an excellent column, Choking on ObamaCare:
Time was, American businesses could surmount such regulatory officiousness. But government’s metabolic urge to boss people around has grown exponentially and today CKE’s California restaurants are governed by 57 categories of regulations. (Click here for entire column.)
How did Tocqueville know?
BTW, we picked up the Tocqueville quote from Mark Steyn’s excellent new book, After America.
Occupy Wall Street: the Democrats’ very own Tar-Baby
In a recent post, FAB wondered if the riots that started in Europe would spread to the United States. We’re finding out. What we are seeing in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) mob is exactly what Ann Coulter talked about in her new book, Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America. To really understand OWS, you should read Ms. Coulter’s book.
OWS mobsters can’t articulate any coherent justification for their “movement,” other than their entitlement to OPS (other people’s stuff). They rail against corporate America, but they communicate on i-pods and cell phones manufactured by American corporations. Ann Coulter wrote:
No one knows what the Wall Street protesters want — as is typical of mobs. They say they want Obama re-elected, but claim to hate “Wall Street.” You know, the same Wall Street that gave its largest campaign donation in history to Obama, who, in turn, bailed out the banks and made Goldman Sachs the fourth branch of government.
This would be like opposing fattening, processed foods, but cheering Michael Moore — which the protesters also did this week.
George Will noted another incoherency, that Washington is too corrupt, but it should be given more power to control our lives. Citing the kind of corruption that would be promoted even more aggressively if the OWS mob gets its way:
[The Obama administration’s Solyndra episode of crony capitalism] does not validate progressivism’s indignation, it refutes progressivism’s aspiration, which is for more minute government supervision of society. Solyndra got to the government trough with the help of a former bundler of Obama campaign contributions who was an Energy Department bureaucrat helping to dispense taxpayers’ money to politically favored companies. His wife’s law firm represented Solyndra. But, then, government of the sort progressives demand — supposed “experts,” wiser than the market, allocating wealth and opportunity by supposedly disinterested decisions — is not just susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.
The list of OWS demands proves that nothing is too extravagant for the people who don’t have to pay for it:
… a “guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment”; a $20-an-hour minimum wage (above the $16 entry wage the United Auto Workers just negotiated with GM); ending “the fossil fuel economy”; “open borders” so “anyone can travel anywhere to work and live”; $1 trillion for infrastructure; $1 trillion for “ecological restoration” (e.g., re-establishing “the natural flow of river systems”); “free college education.”
And forgiveness of “all debt on the entire planet period.” Progressivism’s battle cry is: “Mulligan!” It demands the ultimate entitlement — emancipation from the ruinous results of all prior claims of entitlement.
Mark Steyn summed it up quite well:
[The] “occupy” movement has no real solutions, except more government, more spending, more regulation, more bureaucracy, more unsustainable, lethargic pseudo university with no return on investment, more more more of what got us into this hole.
Desperate for something to give energy to their upcoming 2012 election campaign, the Democrats have embraced OWS and have encouraged its continuation and growth. This is too good to be true. Looks like the Dems have created their very own Tar-Baby, but unlike Br’er Rabbit, they are eager to embrace it, not fight it.
The best outcome possible is that the OWS continues to expose itself and the American Left (i.e., the Democratic party) for what it truly is, an angry mob who claims entitlement to the fruits of other people’s labor.
