Since socialism has been more murderous than racism, pro-socialist speech should be prohibited before pro-racist speech. As evil and murderous as racism is, the record on socialism is worse. For instance, the commencement of World War I, called the August Madness, was heralded as a triumph of communitarianism over selfishness, of gemeinshchaft over geselleschaft, of community over market. The communitarian death count during World War I was 20 million, and an additional 20 million were maimed and disfigured. The renaissance of communitarianism meant the invention of nerve gas, mass killing, and scorched earth policies. The racism of the Ku Klux Klan never came close.
Subsequent socialist, totalitarian models were based on World War I and its war economy, and the mass murders associated with twentieth century socialism were modeled on measures taken, especially by the Germans and Turks, but also by the British, French, and Americans, during the Great War. The degree to which Nazism influenced Swedish socialism is rarely discussed, but in his book The New Totalitarians, Roland Huntford describes Gunnar Myrdal's admiration for Nazism.
The death counts due to Soviet, Chinese and other communist-linked socialisms are disputed, but Josh London's estimates on this page, based on the Black Book of Communism, are as follows:
U.S.S.R.:
20 million deaths; China: 65 million deaths; Vietnam: 1 million deaths; North
Korea: 2 million deaths; Cambodia: 2 million deaths: Eastern Europe: 1 million
deaths; Latin America: 150,000 deaths; Africa: 1.7 million deaths; Afghanistan:
1.5 million deaths; The international Communist movement and Communist parties
not in power: about 10,000 deaths… The total approaches 100 million people
killed.
The numbers in the USSR may have been much higher. As well, the Black Book of Communism excludes non-communist socialists such as the national socialists of Nazi Germany and the left-inspired socialists of fascist Italy. The word "fascist," which has its roots in the fasces or tied rods, which Romans used to signal imperium or the right of command, was first used as a symbol by democratic socialists in the 19th century, most importantly by the militant socialist group Fasci Siciliani. Mussolini himself was for much of his life an active socialist. The distinction between fascism and "progressive" models in the US is difficult to defend. Fascism was a nationalistic ideology, much like American Progressivism.
No other ideology in history comes close to the horror and murder committed by socialists. The number of dead, when one includes the crimes of right wing socialists such as Hitler and Mussolini, is likely in excess of 200 million.
Yet, lying on behalf of socialism continues to be a preoccupation of the American left. Prohibitions on speech are ill advised, but if we are protect ourselves from the horrific consequences of ideology, then the most realistic place to start is socialism.
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Saturday, August 25, 2018
The Dizziest Totalitarians
The Democrats see racists under every other rock and Russians under the alternate rocks. They aim to restrict speech that they deem to be racist and to restrict speech that is friendly to Russians. They are the dizziest party of totalitarians in history.
Saturday, January 13, 2018
The Racism of John R. Commons--And What It Says about Columbus Day
Two guys on Facebook , Jeremy Horpedahl of the University of Central Arkansas and Phillip W. Magness of Berry College, sent me material that documents the racism of John R. Commons. Commons was the chief founder of institutional economics in the United States.
Commons can be fairly called the creator or conceptualizer of the current American industrial relations system and the innovator of much of the New Deal.
Hence, if we are to tear down statutes of Columbus, Jefferson, and Lee because they were racists, so should be consider tearing down the New Deal, which also was the product of racists, conceptualized by racists, and put into place by racists. Commons, for instance, designed the first workmen's compensation law, in Wisconsin, and discussed social insurance reforms and unionization.
Just how racist was John R. Commons?
In his "Racial Composition of the American People: The Negro" Commons writes of the western coast of Africa:
The torrid heat and the excessive humidity...produce a race indolent, improvident, and contented...Sexual purity is unknown...Formerly cannibalism prevailed, but it has now been largely stamped out by European governments...The people are unstable, indifferent to suffering, and easily aroused to ferocity by the sight of blood or under great fear...They exhibit in Africa certain qualities which are associated with their descendants in this country, namely, aversion to silence and solitude, love of rhythm, excitability, and lack of reserve. All travelers speak of their impulsiveness, strong sexual passion, and lack of will power.
Donald Trump is fairly criticized for calling African countries "crappy," but what are we to make of an American New Deal, social insurance and welfare system designed by people who made similar remarks?
Commons adds:
slavery tended to transform the savage by eliminating those those who were self-willed, ambitious, and possessed of individual initiative...Other races of immigrants, by contact with our institutions, have been civilized--the Negro has been only domesticated...The very qualities of intelligence and manliness which are essential for citizenship in a democracy were systematically expunged from the Negro race through two hundred years of slavery.
Commons goes on to call "the war of emancipation" one of "dogmatism" and "partizanship" [sic] because equality and inalienable rights took the place of education and slow evolution of moral character.
He adds: "Self-government means intelligence, self-control, and capacity for cooperation. If these are lacking, the ballot only makes way for the 'boss,' the corruptionist, and the oligarchy under the cloak of democracy."
In discussing how African Americans can be educated in order to be "prepared" for "citizenship" Commons claims that African Americans lack the ability to be trained to use steam cleaners or to paint ceilings.
He says that the majority of African American mechanics are "careless, slovenly, and ill trained." As well, he adds:
the improvidence of the Negro is notorious. His neglect of his horse, his mule, his machinery, his eagerness to spend his earnings on finery, his reckless purchase of watermelons...these and other incidents of improvidence expalin the constant dependence of the Negro upon his employer and his creditot.
When African Americans did become wealthy due to property ownership, Commons attributes this to "unearned increment" rather than intelligent investing. He adds, "Negro bosses and foremen are more despotic than white bosses." As well, "the Negro trade unionist has not as yet shown the organizing capacity of other races," and "when the Negro demands the same wages as white men, his industrial inferiority leads the employer to take white men in his place."
In response to the list of ways that African Americans were supposedly inferior to whites, Commons proposes "an honest educational test" for voting "enforced on both whites and blacks."
In a closing fit of racism, Commons attributes higher death rates among African Americans to moral rather than environmental and social causes.
In New York City, Mayor de Blasio and his left-wing supporters have proposed to tear down statues of Columbus and Theodore Roosevelt. Why shouldn't the New Deal, a legal system designed by a racist, should be treated the same way?
Commons can be fairly called the creator or conceptualizer of the current American industrial relations system and the innovator of much of the New Deal.
Hence, if we are to tear down statutes of Columbus, Jefferson, and Lee because they were racists, so should be consider tearing down the New Deal, which also was the product of racists, conceptualized by racists, and put into place by racists. Commons, for instance, designed the first workmen's compensation law, in Wisconsin, and discussed social insurance reforms and unionization.
Just how racist was John R. Commons?
In his "Racial Composition of the American People: The Negro" Commons writes of the western coast of Africa:
The torrid heat and the excessive humidity...produce a race indolent, improvident, and contented...Sexual purity is unknown...Formerly cannibalism prevailed, but it has now been largely stamped out by European governments...The people are unstable, indifferent to suffering, and easily aroused to ferocity by the sight of blood or under great fear...They exhibit in Africa certain qualities which are associated with their descendants in this country, namely, aversion to silence and solitude, love of rhythm, excitability, and lack of reserve. All travelers speak of their impulsiveness, strong sexual passion, and lack of will power.
Donald Trump is fairly criticized for calling African countries "crappy," but what are we to make of an American New Deal, social insurance and welfare system designed by people who made similar remarks?
Commons adds:
slavery tended to transform the savage by eliminating those those who were self-willed, ambitious, and possessed of individual initiative...Other races of immigrants, by contact with our institutions, have been civilized--the Negro has been only domesticated...The very qualities of intelligence and manliness which are essential for citizenship in a democracy were systematically expunged from the Negro race through two hundred years of slavery.
Commons goes on to call "the war of emancipation" one of "dogmatism" and "partizanship" [sic] because equality and inalienable rights took the place of education and slow evolution of moral character.
He adds: "Self-government means intelligence, self-control, and capacity for cooperation. If these are lacking, the ballot only makes way for the 'boss,' the corruptionist, and the oligarchy under the cloak of democracy."
In discussing how African Americans can be educated in order to be "prepared" for "citizenship" Commons claims that African Americans lack the ability to be trained to use steam cleaners or to paint ceilings.
He says that the majority of African American mechanics are "careless, slovenly, and ill trained." As well, he adds:
the improvidence of the Negro is notorious. His neglect of his horse, his mule, his machinery, his eagerness to spend his earnings on finery, his reckless purchase of watermelons...these and other incidents of improvidence expalin the constant dependence of the Negro upon his employer and his creditot.
When African Americans did become wealthy due to property ownership, Commons attributes this to "unearned increment" rather than intelligent investing. He adds, "Negro bosses and foremen are more despotic than white bosses." As well, "the Negro trade unionist has not as yet shown the organizing capacity of other races," and "when the Negro demands the same wages as white men, his industrial inferiority leads the employer to take white men in his place."
In response to the list of ways that African Americans were supposedly inferior to whites, Commons proposes "an honest educational test" for voting "enforced on both whites and blacks."
In a closing fit of racism, Commons attributes higher death rates among African Americans to moral rather than environmental and social causes.
In New York City, Mayor de Blasio and his left-wing supporters have proposed to tear down statues of Columbus and Theodore Roosevelt. Why shouldn't the New Deal, a legal system designed by a racist, should be treated the same way?
Monday, November 7, 2011
Miami Herald's Leonard Pitts Unschooled on Race and Conservatives
Leonard Pitts, Jr. writes a spin piece in today's Seattle Times (h/t Adam Schmidt on Facebook). Pitts argues that African Americans would be insane to support conservatives because conservatives have always been anti-Black.
Pitts illustrates the historical ignorance that characterizes the American left and its pitiful media. Social conservatives in New England were the leaders of the abolitionist movement. For example, John Brown's father was associated with Oberlin College, where Charles Finney, leader of the Second Great Awakening, was president. Oberlin, a Calvinist Presbyterian School, was the first college to admit African Americans in 1835. Wikipedia writes of Charles Finney:
In addition to becoming a popular Christian evangelist, Finney was involved with the abolitionist movement and frequently denounced slavery from the pulpit. In 1835, he moved to Ohio where he became a professor and later president of Oberlin College
from 1851 to 1866. Oberlin became active early in the movement to end
slavery and was among the first American colleges to co-educate blacks
and women with white men.[8]
As Pitts points out, the worst racists were Democrats. Although Pitts calls them conservatives, the racist Democrats voted for Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt just as the northerners did. Pitts's argument is circular: racism is conservative, therefore, conservatives are racists. But the advocates of limited government were not necessarily more racist than the supporters of big government and big business--the GOP. On the one hand, it is true that Andrew Jackson, the founder of today's Democratic Party, was a racist and that his Supreme Court Chief Justice Taney was responsible for the Dred Scott decision. But the New York labor unions were probably more anti-African American than Jackson was. That The Miami Herald's syndicated columnist Pitts is apparently unfamiliar with the Draft Riots and organized labor's sympathy for the South during the Civil War is an embarrassment to the pathetic legacy of American journalism.
Pitts's argument is tautological: racists are conservative,
therefore conservatives never stood up for blacks. In fact, the first
“conservatives” might be said to have been the pro-laissez faire Mugwumps, who favored the gold standard, opposed tariffs, and favored limited government.
The founder of The Nation, EL Godkin, was not overly supportive of African Americans, but
he was no racist. The Republican Party in the late 19th century
was a big government, pro business party, and mostly laissez faire (at least in words).
At the same time, the
Progressives, especially Woodrow Wilson, were frequently overt racists.
Eugenics was a significant facet of Progressivism, and as C. Vann Woodward points out in The Strange Career of Jim Crow, Jim Crow exploded during the Progressive era, not the Gilded Age, which was characterized by policies and leadership that conservatives support today.
One source of Pitts's confusion (besides being due to an ideologically extremist university and educational system that indoctrinates in left wing groupthink rather than educates, leaving people like Pitts ignorant) is that
popular lingo confuses laissez faire with conservatism and social democracy or
socialism with liberalism. Thus, the Wikipedia article calls Charles Finney "progressive," but he would be considered a social conservative today.
On the one hand, the first big government socialist president in
American politics was Theodore Roosevelt, and he was not a racist. On the other
hand, the first president who was a conservative (defined in opposition to the first "liberal," Roosevelt) was William Howard Taft, and
he wasn’t a racist either. Roosevelt backed Taft before he
learned that Taft would not support regulatory solutions to the trust issue—that
he would instead support a litigated settlement in the Standard
Oil case. The Taft Supreme Court (Taft was the only president to later become Chief Justice) was conservative. Roosevelt ran against Taft in 1912, electing racist-cum-Progressive Woodrow
Wilson in Taft’s place. Wilson began the American socialist project by
pushing through the income tax and the Federal Reserve Bank the following year,
1913. He also implemented Jim Crow in Washington, DC.
Princeton, of which Wilson had been president, has been well known as the most anti-Semitic of the Ivy League universities. Here is what Wikipedia says about Taft:
Princeton, of which Wilson had been president, has been well known as the most anti-Semitic of the Ivy League universities. Here is what Wikipedia says about Taft:
Taft met with and publicly endorsed Booker T. Washington's program for uplifting
the black race, advising them to stay out of politics at the time and emphasize
education and entrepreneurship. A supporter of free immigration, Taft vetoed a law
passed by Congress and supported by labor unions that would have restricted
unskilled laborers by imposing a literacy test.[63]
Moreover, the Southern Democrats, the racists, repeatedly supported left-wing Democrats. They voted for Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Adlai Stevenson. It was not until the 1960s that racism and the Republican Party crossed paths. By then, both parties had become advocates of Progressivism and supporters of the Roosevelt/Rockefeller agenda. In 1944, the entire Jim Crow South voted for the paragon of American socialism, Franklin D. Roosevelt. Alabama, for example, the state remembered for Rosa Parks and the Montgomery boycott of the 1950s, voted 81% for FDR. In 1952 and 1956, the most social democratic candidate between FDR and BHO was Adlai Stevenson. In 1956, the ONLY states in which Stevenson won were the Jim Crow states: Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina.
So Mr. Pitts, you're a doody head.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Call Me a Racist? I'll Call You a Serial Killer
Barack H. Obama began his presidential administration with a massive subsidy to the welfare mothers at Goldman Sachs. He then followed it up with a subsidy to corrupt, organized crime linked contractors and other perpetrators of fraud, which he called a "stimulus". Then, he pushed through an incompetent and destructive health care law that needs to become the first major Washington boondoggle to be repealed. Throughout it all, his supporters have smeared anyone who disagrees with his massacre of the US economy as being a "racist."
The truth of the matter is that there was a statistically significant increase in federal government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product in 2009 as compared to 2008. The spending was mostly attributable to corrupt subsidies to Wall Street and contractors via the stimulus. The spending will be outmatched in coming years as the health care law goes into effect. Anyone not out to murder the American economy is opposed to the policies of President Barack H. Obama.
If opposition to Obama means racism, then an equally valid deduction is that Obama's supporters are serial killers of the economy. They are Jeffrey Dahmers, Ted Bundys and David Berkowitzes.
Call me a racist? I'll call you a serial killer.
The truth of the matter is that there was a statistically significant increase in federal government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product in 2009 as compared to 2008. The spending was mostly attributable to corrupt subsidies to Wall Street and contractors via the stimulus. The spending will be outmatched in coming years as the health care law goes into effect. Anyone not out to murder the American economy is opposed to the policies of President Barack H. Obama.
If opposition to Obama means racism, then an equally valid deduction is that Obama's supporters are serial killers of the economy. They are Jeffrey Dahmers, Ted Bundys and David Berkowitzes.
Call me a racist? I'll call you a serial killer.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Affirmative Action in the Village of Woodstock*
I just wrote the following letter to Brian Hollander, Editor of the Woodstock Times.
Dear Editor:
In response to allegations of racism in the local Tea Parties, I did an informal survey of the Town of Woodstock's representation of various minorities. I counted the number of African-Americans, Native Americans, Mexicans, Asians and South Americans entering and leaving seven local stores. My finding is that the proportion of minorities who live in the Town of Woodstock is not statistically different from the proportion of minorities in the local Tea Parties. It is, however, significantly lower than the proportion of minorities living in the State of New York and in Ulster County. A fair assessment is that the Town of Woodstock is racist.
More than the Tea Parties, which do not use expensive house prices to exclude minority group members, Woodstock is a racist Town. Fewer than five percent of the inhabitants are African American, Latin American, Native American or Asian.
My affirmative action plan is straightforward. The Town of Woodstock needs to mandate that all homes to be sold within its borders must be sold to minority group members until such point that the minority group members are proportionately represented. This will force prices of many Woodstock homes to fall since such an ordinance would restrict demand. However, in the name of equity, equality, affirmative action, and to redress the harm that the people of Woodstock have done to under-represented ethnic and racial groups, homeowners should be grateful for the opportunity to sell to them, even at a loss, to redress social wrongs that the people of Woodstock have perpetrated. Anyone who does not support this proposal is a greedy and selfish racist.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
*Woodstock, NY is located about 100 miles from New York City. It is famous for the Woodstock concert of 1969 (although the actual concert took place about 30 miles away); for artists' and musicians' colonies that go back for over 100 years; and as a weekend home center for Upper West Side "liberals."
Dear Editor:
In response to allegations of racism in the local Tea Parties, I did an informal survey of the Town of Woodstock's representation of various minorities. I counted the number of African-Americans, Native Americans, Mexicans, Asians and South Americans entering and leaving seven local stores. My finding is that the proportion of minorities who live in the Town of Woodstock is not statistically different from the proportion of minorities in the local Tea Parties. It is, however, significantly lower than the proportion of minorities living in the State of New York and in Ulster County. A fair assessment is that the Town of Woodstock is racist.
More than the Tea Parties, which do not use expensive house prices to exclude minority group members, Woodstock is a racist Town. Fewer than five percent of the inhabitants are African American, Latin American, Native American or Asian.
My affirmative action plan is straightforward. The Town of Woodstock needs to mandate that all homes to be sold within its borders must be sold to minority group members until such point that the minority group members are proportionately represented. This will force prices of many Woodstock homes to fall since such an ordinance would restrict demand. However, in the name of equity, equality, affirmative action, and to redress the harm that the people of Woodstock have done to under-represented ethnic and racial groups, homeowners should be grateful for the opportunity to sell to them, even at a loss, to redress social wrongs that the people of Woodstock have perpetrated. Anyone who does not support this proposal is a greedy and selfish racist.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
*Woodstock, NY is located about 100 miles from New York City. It is famous for the Woodstock concert of 1969 (although the actual concert took place about 30 miles away); for artists' and musicians' colonies that go back for over 100 years; and as a weekend home center for Upper West Side "liberals."
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
New Definition of Racism
racism
[rey-siz-uhm] --noun
[rey-siz-uhm] --noun
sɪz
1. questioning of or disagreement with the policies of President Barack Hussein Obama, such as socialized health care and taxes on fuel.
2. the belief in individualism and freedom as outlined by John Locke in his Second Treatise on Government, in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States, esp. as it interferes with the programs, policies and cult of President Barack Hussein Obama
3. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.
4. a policy, system of government, etc., based upon or fostering such a doctrine; discrimination.
5. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.
6. dislike of President Barack H. Obama
6. dislike of President Barack H. Obama
racist, noun, adjective
an·ti·ra·cism, noun
an·ti·ra·cist, noun, adjective
Monday, April 19, 2010
New York Times, Huffington Post Are Turkey Farms
I was just doing a little web surfing. I Googled the words "tea party" and "racism". There was an article on Huffington Post recently calling the Tea Partiers ignorant racists. As well, the New York Times had an article about Confederate History Month and someone commented on the Times's blog about the Woodstock Times article, specifically alluding to my statement on this blog that I am a Confederate. Of course, that has nothing to do with race or slavery. It is an allusion to the 10th Amendment and decentralization. I conclude from looking at the articles and posters on both the Huffington Post blog and at the New York Times that both are turkey farms. Their readers are turkeys. And that goes for the so-called journalists as well. And it goes for whoever wrote that dull-witted post.
I celebrated with a letter to Brian Hollander, editor of the Woodstock Times:
I celebrated with a letter to Brian Hollander, editor of the Woodstock Times:
----- Original Message -----
From: Mitchell Langbert
Sent: Monday, April 19, 2010 5:28 AM
Subject: Fw: Corrected: American Breakfast Tea
Dear Editor Hollander:
Thank you and Paul Smart for the coverage of our nascent Tea Party group ("American Breakfast Tea", April 8). However, a point of clarification regarding Mr. Smart's reference to my belief in the Confederacy, John Calhoun and Andrew Jackson is in order. I write in part because one of the Woodstock Times's readers quoted the article and libelously alluded to it on a New York Times blog. Please note that my reference to the Confederacy, John C. Calhoun and Andrew Jackson had nothing at all to do with slavery or race. This is a common libel concerning the Tea Party among the benighted social democratic press. It is false that the Tea Party has to do with racism.
If you read my blog regularly you know that Mr. Smart took my point out of context. My chief interest is in decentralization of government. John C. Calhoun and Andrew Jackson were two of the most important advocates of decentralization. This is closely related to modern management theories of Alfred Chandler and Oliver Williamson.
Moreover, I am surprised that any of your readers are unaware that the primary issue over which the Civil War was fought was not slavery but states' rights and decentralization. This appears to be one more application of the rule that the more leftists and "progressives" preen themselves about their supposed superior intellects, the more limited their educations turn out to be. In addition, your reader quoted Mr. Smart's quotation from my blog, which was deliberately selected to be incendiary (we love you anyway, Paul), without having taken the trouble to read it. If your readers wish to read my blog rather than draw libelous conclusions without having done so, it is located at http://www.mitchell-langbert.blogspot.com.
Sincerely,
Mitchell Langbert
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Michael Moore's Racist Stereotyping of Barack Obama
Michael Moore posted this on his blog. Note the racist stereotyping whereby all African Americans, including the President, are basketball players.
>A Message from Michael Moore
Dear GOP:
That is so cool! I knew you guys were more than just all Lee Greenwood and Pat Boone. Let me expand on my remarks.
You see, Obama is LeBron and you are the Clippers. The Clippers know that LeBron is going to fake right and go left, but it doesn't matter — they're still the Clippers and he's LeBron and he's going to make the basket. Even if he shouted at the Clippers as he's coming down the court, "hey, I'm gonna fake right and go left when I get to the basket," they still aren't going to stop him. And you, the GOP, are not going to stop Obama...Now, what do you know about Obama's hook shot?
– Michael Moore
As I have previously blogged, the most racist element of American society today is white "progressives" who mostly live in wealthy urban enclaves; exclusive suburbs; and all-white university towns. Moore, who claims to be a working class citizen of Flynt, Michigan, actually owns an apartment on Manhattan's exclusive Upper West Side, just two blocks from Zabar's, the deli where you can buy excellent cheeses at very low prices. I suspect Moore visits them often.
>A Message from Michael Moore
Dear GOP:
That is so cool! I knew you guys were more than just all Lee Greenwood and Pat Boone. Let me expand on my remarks.
You see, Obama is LeBron and you are the Clippers. The Clippers know that LeBron is going to fake right and go left, but it doesn't matter — they're still the Clippers and he's LeBron and he's going to make the basket. Even if he shouted at the Clippers as he's coming down the court, "hey, I'm gonna fake right and go left when I get to the basket," they still aren't going to stop him. And you, the GOP, are not going to stop Obama...Now, what do you know about Obama's hook shot?
– Michael Moore
As I have previously blogged, the most racist element of American society today is white "progressives" who mostly live in wealthy urban enclaves; exclusive suburbs; and all-white university towns. Moore, who claims to be a working class citizen of Flynt, Michigan, actually owns an apartment on Manhattan's exclusive Upper West Side, just two blocks from Zabar's, the deli where you can buy excellent cheeses at very low prices. I suspect Moore visits them often.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Racist Obama Supporters Continue to Harass This Blog
Barack Obama is the most divisive, ugliest and most racist president in recent decades. His supporters continue to attack me through the comments section of this blog. I just rejected a comment that called me a "white racist pig".
The person who wrote the comment felt that because Mr. Obama is black that he ought not to be criticized and that anyone who criticizes him is a racist. That is a racist claim.
Barack Obama is a con man, a liar who pretends to help the poor but stuffs his back pockets with money and supports Wall Street.
My great grandparents were killed in southern Poland in the holocaust. My paternal great-great grandfather had his index finger chopped off by the Czar. I don't seek sympathy, and I am sick of the Democrats' bulls*it racism.
The person who wrote the comment felt that because Mr. Obama is black that he ought not to be criticized and that anyone who criticizes him is a racist. That is a racist claim.
Barack Obama is a con man, a liar who pretends to help the poor but stuffs his back pockets with money and supports Wall Street.
My great grandparents were killed in southern Poland in the holocaust. My paternal great-great grandfather had his index finger chopped off by the Czar. I don't seek sympathy, and I am sick of the Democrats' bulls*it racism.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Institutional Death in America and Europe
The new and old worlds are divided not just by their relative emphasis on flexibility and markets, but also by their openness to change. Radicalism in Europe has generally taken the forms of Hegelian emphasis on historicism. Marxism and its derivatives while pretending to advocate radical change are romantic reassertions of medieval stability and security. The chief outcomes of Russian and eastern European communism were societies that had difficulty with flexibility and change, that could not integrate information about price and consumer demand intelligently and that placed political stability before economic change. As well, Europe has emphasized the Nietzschean will to power and minimized liberal openness to change.
Both Americans like Europeans have revealed prejudices but while Americans are discarding them, Europeans are not. In the 19th century the people of California hated Asians and passed discriminatory laws against them. The first immigration law in America, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, excluded Chinese mining labor from immigration under penalty of law and required that Chinese immigrants obtain certification of their qualification to immigrate. In 1902 Chinese immigrants were required to register with the government and obtain a certificate of residency. Similarly, antagonism and hatred toward African-Americans following Reconstruction led to passage of Jim Crow laws by post-Reconstruction redeemer governments beginning in 1876 and the laws continued in force until passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. The northeastern Mugwumps, the educated post-reconstruction Republicans who preceded the Progressives around 1884, did not advocate the Jim Crow laws aggressively but did not oppose them aggressively either. The Jim Crow laws were primarily the product of southern Democrats. The northern Democrats did not oppose them either. As president, Woodrow Wilson intensified the Jim Crow laws and supported them. During the Progressive era, imperialist sentiment fit the racism of the Jim Crow laws. Progressivism was very much associated with racism.
In Europe, there was a parallel history of anti-Semitism. Jews were banned from England, France and Spain in the middle ages and were forced to migrate to Asia Minor and eastern Europe. In Germany and Italy they were forced to live in ghettos. During the Crusades, Crusaders murdered tens of thousands of Jews (along with eastern Christians, southern French Christians and Muslims). There was a brief period of liberalization in the 19th century, but in the twentieth the rise of Nazism, a derivative of Marxism, led to the murder of the majority of European Jews.
Despite this history of bigotry in both continents, in recent decades Americans have reduced but not eliminated the degree of anti-Asian and anti-Chinese racism. In contrast, anti-Semitism is more intense in Europe than it has been since World War II. The European addiction to anti-Semitism attends a deeper inability to overcome antiquated traditions and class structures that inhibit change.
Americans' ability to create and accept change may in part be the cultural residue of the American frontier. The open frontier led this people to see the possibility of the new. As well, the science and technology that freedom made possible, the inventions and progress that came from laissez faire capitalism, led to an openness to change. Perhaps the openness to change went to far under the philosophy of modernism, but it is preferable to the alternative, which is the stagnation of bigotry, impoverishment and lost economic opportunity. The degree of tradition and change is best balanced through private decision, not through bureaucratic laws that require landmark preservation.
As well, Americans are a religious people, and their acceptance of change is likely linked to their faith. In America, religious tolerance has been the norm and religion has been a matter of belief and conscience rather than social imposition and structure. Many Americans have believed that material rewards reflect divine grace. Since belief in God is a matter of conscience, not social institution, and since material rewards reflect divine election, in many Americans' view, American are likely to pursue and feel comfortable with such rewards and with the change that they require.
Since the creation of wealth requires the creation of change, of new ideas, of new markets and new technology, the converse of new ideas, the death of old ones, is critical to change. Europeans are reluctant to give up old prejudices like anti-Semitism and tribal social arrangements like socialism. Firms cannot in the European model be allowed to go bankrupt. Business executives must be permitted to maintain their social position and employees must be secure in their jobs.
To the extent that Americans adopt such tribal, European views they will be unable to change. Change depends on death. The growth of the economy depends on the death of failed firms. Incompetent managements like Bear Stearn's or Enron's do not deserve subsidies. Their managements have failed and deserve the economic returns that failure implies.
Likewise, the introduction of Progressive and New Deal institutions were significant not so much because they reflected change, but rather because the institutions reflected the tribal views of German historicism and so became institutionalized as reaction to change. Few Progressive institutions have been overturned and those New Deal institutions that were not rejected by the Supreme Court have remained in place for the past 70 years. When change in proposed, the American people's reaction is not the openness to change that characterized America in an earlier era but a European-style tribal reacton, a fear of change and a hostility to the possibility that failed institutions ought to change. Likewise, when American business has failed, as it increasingly often has in the past decade, the American people's reaction has been to protect the wealth of those whose businesses failed to produce value for investors or for the American people and so shore up a class system that is decidedly non-American in nature.
Both Americans like Europeans have revealed prejudices but while Americans are discarding them, Europeans are not. In the 19th century the people of California hated Asians and passed discriminatory laws against them. The first immigration law in America, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, excluded Chinese mining labor from immigration under penalty of law and required that Chinese immigrants obtain certification of their qualification to immigrate. In 1902 Chinese immigrants were required to register with the government and obtain a certificate of residency. Similarly, antagonism and hatred toward African-Americans following Reconstruction led to passage of Jim Crow laws by post-Reconstruction redeemer governments beginning in 1876 and the laws continued in force until passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. The northeastern Mugwumps, the educated post-reconstruction Republicans who preceded the Progressives around 1884, did not advocate the Jim Crow laws aggressively but did not oppose them aggressively either. The Jim Crow laws were primarily the product of southern Democrats. The northern Democrats did not oppose them either. As president, Woodrow Wilson intensified the Jim Crow laws and supported them. During the Progressive era, imperialist sentiment fit the racism of the Jim Crow laws. Progressivism was very much associated with racism.
In Europe, there was a parallel history of anti-Semitism. Jews were banned from England, France and Spain in the middle ages and were forced to migrate to Asia Minor and eastern Europe. In Germany and Italy they were forced to live in ghettos. During the Crusades, Crusaders murdered tens of thousands of Jews (along with eastern Christians, southern French Christians and Muslims). There was a brief period of liberalization in the 19th century, but in the twentieth the rise of Nazism, a derivative of Marxism, led to the murder of the majority of European Jews.
Despite this history of bigotry in both continents, in recent decades Americans have reduced but not eliminated the degree of anti-Asian and anti-Chinese racism. In contrast, anti-Semitism is more intense in Europe than it has been since World War II. The European addiction to anti-Semitism attends a deeper inability to overcome antiquated traditions and class structures that inhibit change.
Americans' ability to create and accept change may in part be the cultural residue of the American frontier. The open frontier led this people to see the possibility of the new. As well, the science and technology that freedom made possible, the inventions and progress that came from laissez faire capitalism, led to an openness to change. Perhaps the openness to change went to far under the philosophy of modernism, but it is preferable to the alternative, which is the stagnation of bigotry, impoverishment and lost economic opportunity. The degree of tradition and change is best balanced through private decision, not through bureaucratic laws that require landmark preservation.
As well, Americans are a religious people, and their acceptance of change is likely linked to their faith. In America, religious tolerance has been the norm and religion has been a matter of belief and conscience rather than social imposition and structure. Many Americans have believed that material rewards reflect divine grace. Since belief in God is a matter of conscience, not social institution, and since material rewards reflect divine election, in many Americans' view, American are likely to pursue and feel comfortable with such rewards and with the change that they require.
Since the creation of wealth requires the creation of change, of new ideas, of new markets and new technology, the converse of new ideas, the death of old ones, is critical to change. Europeans are reluctant to give up old prejudices like anti-Semitism and tribal social arrangements like socialism. Firms cannot in the European model be allowed to go bankrupt. Business executives must be permitted to maintain their social position and employees must be secure in their jobs.
To the extent that Americans adopt such tribal, European views they will be unable to change. Change depends on death. The growth of the economy depends on the death of failed firms. Incompetent managements like Bear Stearn's or Enron's do not deserve subsidies. Their managements have failed and deserve the economic returns that failure implies.
Likewise, the introduction of Progressive and New Deal institutions were significant not so much because they reflected change, but rather because the institutions reflected the tribal views of German historicism and so became institutionalized as reaction to change. Few Progressive institutions have been overturned and those New Deal institutions that were not rejected by the Supreme Court have remained in place for the past 70 years. When change in proposed, the American people's reaction is not the openness to change that characterized America in an earlier era but a European-style tribal reacton, a fear of change and a hostility to the possibility that failed institutions ought to change. Likewise, when American business has failed, as it increasingly often has in the past decade, the American people's reaction has been to protect the wealth of those whose businesses failed to produce value for investors or for the American people and so shore up a class system that is decidedly non-American in nature.
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