by Adam Yoshida –
One should not make the mistake of thinking that the pathetic floundering of the Obama administration and the imminent doom of Europe’s spendthrift welfare states spells the end of global socialism. Socialism has rarely attempted to make any claim to being a more efficient or economically creative system. Instead, it has always touted “fairness” and “equality” as its primary virtues. Any and all failures of the system are being — and will be — attributed to its opponents: the “greedy” rich, the distastefully aspirational segment of the middle class, and a “working” class blind to its “interests” as hallucinated by Manhattan-based academics.
Most of its supporters will never be able to confess the defects inherent in their creed, even if the alternative is to embrace extreme and previously unthinkable measures. The crisis of socialism is, like the crisis of communism that preceded the fall of the Berlin Wall over two decades ago, an hour of maximum danger for freedom. [Read more…]