Another Note Covering A Variety Of Topics 1

Thoughts about the consequences of socialism and the political left.

This item provides a synopsis of history that most modern day thinkers do not care about, ignore, revise, or dismiss as irrelevant.  It validates the abject failures of modern day people who choose to ignore facts and participate in fantasies of their own making or following the ever changing intellectual fads of the day.  The mistakes being made are enormous and are at the root of most of today's trials and tribulations.  Quote: "In today’s irreligious and indeed antireligious climate the fashion is to dismiss Christianity as crude superstition, and to babble wisely about the separation of church and state. This is unfortunate, and stupid, since Christianity was the heart and soul of as yet the greatest civilization the world has seen. Those who know nothing of it cannot understand the last two thousand years and how our world came to be."  And, "The future? Christianity seems to be dying out. A resurgence is hard to imagine. It simply isn’t suited to the modern world. The Old Testament in particular is ugly and immoral and its magical events I suspect are too much for the modern mind. Islam, being fanatical and primitive, will presumably survive for a while in its own lands. The mental night that is Islam can be seen in virtually everything, from schooling to commerce and is attributable to a religious hostility to modernity. From The Closing, mentioned above: “In comparison the number of patents registered in the twenty-year period from 1980 to 2000, the report shows Korea with 16328 and nine countries in the Middle East, including Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, with 370, with even many of these patents registered by foreigners.” Judaism? Materialist in the philosophical sense and not requiring its adherents to believe things apparently impossible, it would seem better adapted to modernity. It imposes no restrictions on its adherents in science, culture, or commerce.  But Christendom was a hell of a show while it lasted."    https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/04/28/the-place-of-christianity-in-history-a-view-from-without/

This item discusses what the author believes is at least one of the main legacies Karl Marx left us, "anti-intellectualism". Quote: "They learned them from Marx. Thomas Sowell put it this way in his 1985 book, Marxism: Philosophy and Economics: Much of the intellectual legacy of Marx is an anti-intellectual legacy. It has been said that you cannot refute a sneer. Marxism has taught many – inside and outside its ranks – to sneer at capitalism, at inconvenient facts or contrary interpretations, and thus to sneer at the intellectual process itself. This has been one of the sources of its enduring strength as a political doctrine, and as a means of acquiring and using political power in unbridled ways."  This acquisition and use of power was not innocuous. Marx famously wrote that “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” Change it Marx and his followers did, and not for the better. Societies built on Marxist ideals were and are murder machines, and even when people aren’t lined up and shot for their opposition to various revolutions, they are made to “leap forward” and are ultimately starved to death. The body count from communist regimes – reaching into the tens of millions – is Marx’s intellectual and political legacy. Would that he and his followers had been more open to the possibility that they might be wrong."     https://fee.org/articles/marxs-legacy-is-anti-intellectualism/?

This item details one of the many reasons why Socialistic states always fail.  Quote: "Socialism, as my New Orleans questioner implied, is often assumed to be moral. Is that assumption justified?  Socialism is a utopian ideal intended to solve all of humanity’s problems including, above all, poverty and inequality. The theory and practice, alas, have tended to be at odds with one another.  Here is how Karl Marx outlined the future benefits of a socialist society:  “If we have chosen the position in life in which we can most of all work for mankind, no burdens can bow us down, because they are sacrifices for the benefit of all; then we shall experience no petty, limited, selfish joy, but our happiness will belong to millions, our deeds will live on quietly but perpetually at work, and over our ashes will be shed the hot tears of noble people.” How has that "noble" idea worked out everywhere it has been forced upon the people?  Another quote: "Applying socialist ideas in practice turned out to be much more problematic. One of the most obvious shortcomings of socialism in real life is its tendency to lead toward dictatorship. This relationship, clearly visible in Venezuela today, was first identified by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek in The Road to Serfdom.  In 1944, when he wrote his book, Hayek noted that the crimes of the German National Socialists and Soviet Communists were, in great part, the result of growing state control over the economy.   As he explained, growing state interference in the economy leads to massive inefficiencies and long queues outside empty shops. A state of perpetual economic crisis then leads to calls for more planning."   https://fee.org/articles/under-socialism-morality-is-scarcer-than-bread/?   The truth is that our political leftist have slowly but surely for many years inflicted historically provable failed socialistic ideas on us and our country.

This item provides good rationale explaining the reasons why and how the political left is shutting down freedom of speech.  Quote: "First of all, when I talk about the so-called political Left, I’m talking about people who are firmly in the Globalist camp. They may not know they are, but they are. The Globalists work through various versions of socialism and quasi-socialism and Communism and Marxism and “free the people” and all sorts of other slogans and guiding ideas. These political philosophies and strategies have nothing to do with Globalism per se—they’re just provisional tactics Globalists use to gain power, because power is the goal. Their system is top-heavy control under a variety of names and deceptions. That’s just the way it is. The Globalists are run by crony capitalists at the top who stole their way to riches and then turned around and decided to limit the game, so they would remain in charge. Their approach is to appear humane. It’s a lie. Their goal is straightforward: they want to make the planet one nation, which they operate like a machine. The stand for The Machine, and against life. The political Left, at ground level, is clueless about all of this. They’re sucked in by the humane propaganda. They look to a utopia where nobody has to work or earn money. Many of these ground troops are hoping and dreaming about that day because they’re convinced they can’t make it in an open market. That, too, is just the way it is. Now they’re emboldened to shut down free speech, meaning speech and language and words and ideas they don’t like, because… They’re finding out they can. That’s the simple answer. They can. It gives them a sense of power they haven’t felt. They can do “big things.” They can riot and throw bricks through store windows and shut down campus speeches and whine and cry about trigger words and safe spaces and get away with it. They can have an impact. They’ve never experienced that before."    https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/05/15/why-the-political-left-feels-emboldened-to-shut-down-free-speech/ 

This is what needs to be learned from the Venezuela's fateful experiment. Quote: "In a capitalist economy, nobody sets the prices of goods and services (unless, of course, one considers heavily regulated parts of the economy such as the American healthcare system under Obamacare). Prices emerge “spontaneously”, depending on supply and demand. Socialist countries, in contrast, employ thousands of bureaucrats who try to estimate future supply and demand, and incorporate those estimates into Soviet five-year plans. By Khrushchev’s time, it was clear that Soviet “plans” were not worth the paper they were scribbled on. The failure of central planning explained both the shortages of basic goods in the USSR and the need for an independent and capitalist Switzerland. Conversely, it is useful for people in free-market democracies to be constantly reminded of the consequences of alternative economic and political arrangements, such as those in contemporary Venezuela. The country’s attempt to build 21^st-century socialism has run into predictable problems, including rising infant mortality rates, triple-digit inflation, widespread food shortages, a collapsing healthcare system and failing rule of law, and the growing repression of the opposition by the state."     https://fee.org/articles/what-venezuela-can-teach-young-socialists/?

Why is it that the mainstream media never ever tells the truth about the troubles in Venezuela?  Quote: " If you want a simple test to determine if a news source is in the fake news business, examine what they write about Venezuela. If they write about the mass starvation, riots, and shortages with no mention of socialism’s role in the disaster, then you know they are fake news providers.  The fate of Venezuela, which has the largest oil reserves in the world, ought to be the final lesson conclusively proving that socialism is a delusion that impoverishes those it purports to help.  An entire nation is starving, unable to feed itself, generate enough electricity, or produce toilet paper. In the midst of boundless opportunity, its economy is grinding to a halt because  of socialism." http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/05/american_media_hiding_socialisms_devastation_of_venezuela_.html   Yet our leftist friends seem determined to bring that very same travesty to our country.