Tony Blankley, November 24, 2004
This Christmastime could be the moment when Western Europe finally joins our war on terrorism. Anti-Islamist fear and anger from the mouths of the European volk are breaking through the surface calm perpetuated by the elite European appeasers. The assassination and mutilation of Dutch filmmaker van Gogh by an Islamic fanatic — and the retaliatory fire-bombings of mosques by ethnic Dutchmen — has forced high European leaders and news outlets to begin to publicly face up to the implications of Sept. 11, 2001 and the migration of Muslims in large and hostile numbers into the heart of Europe.
From Holland’s leading newspaper, the Telegraaf, to Germany’s liberal Berliner Zeitung and Der Spiegel (roughly, the European equivalents of the The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time magazine) has come the same heated prose that could be found in the United States in the aftermath of September 11. And here in the United States, even the liberal National Public Radio Network’s (NPR) “All Things Considered” is beginning to seriously report European volkish fury the way they usually report breathlessly on the latest developments in Brazilian rainforest depletion.
Read the entire article on the Town Hall website.
Hating Freedom. Totalitarian Impulses at the Core of Utopian Impulses
Anne Applebaum is a far better writer than I am. Here is an excerpt from her her essary published in the WAPO recently:
This is in particular reference to the absurd claims of the Guardian newspaper of the U.K. that the Ukrainians who are protesting the stealing of the recent Presidential election and the coercion exerted by the presence of Russian special forces on Ukrainian soil are actually American dupes.
I think that the analysis applies to many comments in this forum on topics outside of the issues raised by the Ukrainian conflict.
Taking Your Freedom For Your Own Good
Some time ago, Dean, defined his Christian vision as creating a GOVERNMENT which responds to the Christian responsibility to care for the poor. This GOVERNMENT would be an institution which “improved people’s lives.” Dean has also referred to well-to-do people as “obscenely wealthy.” Economically productive people, OR, those whose parents were economically productive people and who are able to conserve wealth intelligently are inherently suspect.
Yet, if wealth were totally leveled in the United States, if every adult were allowed to keep no more than $10,000 worth of assets, five years later Bill Gates would be far richer than the rest of us.
If 100,000 American business, American military and American trained scientists were deposited in the Sudan with enough food to live for two years and left alone, the Sudan would be a thriving economy ten years later. In order to suppress the natural variation in human ability and the natural differences the drive to be economically productive, Dean will have to construct a powerful and thoroughly intrusive government. Actually many studies show that the most economically successful people, are those who simply have the greatest drive. I have seen it myself. Under Dean, this high-energy people will be retrained. We will all be poor together, at least those who cannot escape his “improving government.”
Unfortunately, I fear that the government would not only take more than the 50% of my income that it takes now, but, that it would proceed to “improve my life” in some obnoxious way. I fear that my money would not be enough for the machine. I think I am a prime candidate for retraining.
RE: No. 51. Driving cross-county five years ago, my car streaking west on I-80 across the plains of western Nebraska, I caught a brilliant sermon on one of the few radio stations I could find to break the static. The radio preacher compared hell to a banquet with tables loaded with mounds of sumptuous food. Around the table sat emaciated and starving people. The Devil had provided them with six-foot forks with which they could only feed each other, but not themselves. The people at the table were starving because they were too selfish to help each other.
Abraham Lincoln called the United States government, “by the people, of the people and for the people”, not “by the rich, of the rich,and for the rich”. It exists to serve all the people not just those wealthy enough to purchase influence. The United States has historically enjoyed the greatest social stability when it has had a large middle class and the most wide and even distribution of wealth and income. Government initiatives to alleviate poverty and increase the number of skilled laborers and middle-class consumers builds both a solid, law-abiding citizenry with a stake in society, as well as a larger market for the goods and services provided by business and commerce. The ideal shape of the nation’s economic distribution is that of a Diamond, narrow on the top and bottom and wide in the middle, and not an hour-glass.
Without direct government action to create economic opportunity and promote a more even distribution of wealth there is natural tendency for the hour-glass to develop, with yawning disparities in wealth and income and great pockets of obsecene wealth and shocking poverty. Such a disparity can only have a negative impact on social order and stability. Its shocking to hear people remark that a CEO making 200 times the average salary of one of his employees isn’t adequetly rewarded for his hard work – it must be 300 times larger.
Like the starving denizins of hell, in the preacher’s allegorical tale, we keep doing things that are going to hurt America in the long run because of our selfishness and greed, like running up a huge unmanageable federal debt, failing to invest in our own workers, and neglecting our public institutions, infrastructure and our children.
Dean
No one has suggested pure and unfettered capitalism. Americans accept an activist government which seeks to influence the economy in positive ways. Virtually all Americans favor a strong and effective public education system as a way of breaking any generational tranmission of poverty. America HAD a strong and effective educational system, it assimilated millions of immigrants from Eastern Europe in the first decade of the 20th century. We have lost that educational system to the teacher’s unions and the cultural Left. America remains has one of the best distributions of wealth in the world. A few Fortune 500 CEO’s who earn high incomes do not a case make. America also has the best economic mobility in the world.
You have expressly stated that your vision included a GOVERNMENT which fulfilled the Christian duty of care for the poor, and those who did not agree that GOVERNMENT should be the sole instrument of care for the poor lacked compassion.
The Hell analogy is very nice, but, it suggests that non-socialists have no interest in helping the poor. Christian charity existed for centuries before socialists walked the earth. Christian charity established thousands upon thousands of private, charitable institutions such as hospitals and schools which have benefited inumerable people all over the world. You might note that Bill and Melinda Gates have donated millions to worthy causes in the United States and all over the world. Your disagreement with Gates is that you want a government paid social worker to distribute Gates’ money, you don’t want his private foundation making the decision. The difference is a parasite class of oppressive social workers improving the lives of us all whether we want it or not.
You are not at peace with the products of economic activity. You clearly believe that any accumulation of wealth is something to be disdained and is something touched with evil. Wealth is like sex, it can be directed to good purposes or bad. Socialism has spread poverty wherever it has been instituted. The poorest nations in the world are the those with the highest degree of socialism. North Korea is starving. Eastern Europe is crawling out of the economic cellar after the demise of Communism. Read Richard Pipe’s 180 page book entitled Communism. It is an excellent short summary of the disgraceful history of this failed totalitarian utopia which killed so many people and left so many people improverished.