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A Further Perspective
The American Left’s European Nightmare
They’ve seen the future and they know it doesn’t work.
In recent years, American liberals’ love-affair with all things contemporary Western European (sans Margaret Thatcher and Benedict XVI) has acquired an increasingly desperate edge. As evidence for the European social model’s severe dysfunctionality continues to mount before our eyes, the American left is acutely aware how much it discredits its decades-old effort to take America down the same economic path. Hence, the ever-more screechy insistence that Europe’s existing mess is due to specific, even one-off factors.
Exhibit A in this regard is the New York Times’ Paul Krugman. In his latest missive on this topic, “What Ails Europe?” our Nobel Laureate informs us that European welfare states aren’t central to the problem. Sweden, he points out, is doing well, despite the fact it has a large welfare state. Instead, Krugman maintains, what truly plagues Europe is a money problem.
Putting aside the fact that Sweden has actually implemented significant welfare reforms and economic liberalization policies since the 1990s, Europe does indeed face huge monetary challenges. Having a common currency while permitting euro-members to violate mutually-agreed debt limits was always a recipe for disaster. Greece could happily splurge on adding tens of thousands of public sector workers to the government’s payroll and financing Chicago-esque patronage politics, while Portugal built dozens of now-idle, often half-finished soccer stadiums.
Why? Because everyone knew if things went bad, then preserving the euro (a sacred cow for Europe’s political class) from the impact of nations’ defaulting meant that heavyweights like Germany would go to considerable lengths to try and prevent a currency-meltdown.
Yet this amounts to only a partial — and therefore inadequate — explanation of Europe’s present disarray. Moreover, it can’t disguise the truth that there’s something even more fundamental driving Europe’s economic crisis. And this reality is that the Social Democratic project is coming apart at the seams under the weight of the economic policies and priorities pursued by most Social Democrats (whatever their party-designation) — including the American variety.
From the beginning, post-war Social Democracy’s goal (to which much of Europe’s right also subscribes) was to use the state to realize as much economic security and equality as possible, without resorting to the outright collectivization pursued by the comrades in the East. In policy-terms, that meant extensive regulation, legal privileges for trade unions, “free” healthcare, subsidies and special breaks for politically-connected businesses, ever-growing social security programs, and legions of national and EU public sector workers to “manage” the regulatory-welfare state — all of which was presided over by an increasingly-inbred European political class (Europe’s real “1 percent”) with little-to-no experience of the private sector.
None of this was cost-free. It was financed by punishing taxation and, particularly in recent years, public and private debt. In terms of outcomes, it has produced some of the developed world’s worst long-term unemployment rates, steadily-declining productivity, and risk-averse private sectors.
Above all, it slowly strangled the living daylights out of economic freedom in much of Europe. Without Germany (which, incidentally, also engaged in welfare reform and considerable economic liberalization in the 2000s), it’s hard to avoid concluding that Social Democratic Europe would have imploded long ago.
But don’t take my word for it. In mid-February, the European Central Bank’s new president, Mario Draghi, bluntly stated: “The European social model has already gone.” That is decidedly not music to American liberal ears. Further distorting the tone, Draghi added: “there was a time when (economist) Rudi Dornbusch used to say that the Europeans are so rich they can afford to pay everybody for not working. That’s gone.”
Then there are the pointed criticisms of the European model expressed in a recently released World Bank report. Outside the parallel universe inhabited by Occupy Wall Street and assorted fellow-travelers, few would accuse the World Bank of harboring many radical free marketers, let alone the “neoliberal” bogeymen regularly conjured up by European politicians.
Among other things, the report refers to weak work incentives, anemic entrepreneurship levels, feeble venture-capital markets, over-regulated service sectors, European businesses choosing to stay small to avoid compulsory unionization and extra red-tape, labor markets crippled by powerful restrictions on companies’ ability to dismiss employees, research and development steadily falling further behind America, and on-going declines in annual work hours. The report also notes that Europe, with just 10 percent of the world’s population, accounts for an astonishing 58 percent of the entire world economy’s spending on social protection.
Such is the long-term economic price associated with what amounts to many Europeans’ near-obsession with securing economic security and equality through state action. It also has made a continent that once literally ruled most of the world into a textbook example of the basic un-workability of the Social Democratic dream.
Hence, it’s little wonder that Krugman and others dismiss those who warn of disturbing parallels between Europe and America as having “no idea what they’re talking about.” The purpose of such remarks is to shut down discussion — just one of American liberalism’s many illiberal traits — in the face of awkward truths and facts.
In a way, we’re been here before. Prior to Communism’s defeat in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, many American liberals were in denial about the performance of command economies. Another Nobel Laureate, the late Paul Samuelson, argued in the thirteenth edition of his renowned textbook Economics, that “the Soviet economy is proof that, contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, a socialist command economy can function and thrive.” Providentially, this edition was published in the year, ahem, 1989.
Such tragically mistimed observations, however, reflected decades of ignoring the realities of life in command economies. In the tenth edition of Economics (1976), for example, Samuelson claimed: “It is a vulgar mistake to think that most people in Eastern Europe are miserable.”
Vulgar? A mistake? Well, I guess all those secret police, informers, “re-education facilities,” barbed-wires, and Soviet troop concentrations in the “workers-paradises” were just there for decorative purposes.
In the real world, of course, there are genuine arguments for us to have about what Europe’s present drama means for America. Even some of Krugman’s New York Times’ colleagues have engaged such questions, albeit rather tentatively. But to just deny that Europe’s failures don’t represent an important canary in the tunnel for America surely reflects a disposition from which American liberals regularly accuse their critics of suffering: instinctual closed-bloody-mindedness.
About the Author
Samuel Gregg is Research Director at the Acton Institute. He has authored several books including On Ordered Liberty, his prize-winning The Commercial Society, Wilhelm Röpke’s Political Economy, and, most recently, Becoming Europe: Economic Decline, Culture, and America’s Future.
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JimH| 3.2.12 @ 6:47AM
You miss the point. For the left it matters not if things work as long as ones intentions are good.
oldfart| 3.2.12 @ 8:04AM
Exactly - the plan is perfect, if it does not work then it must be the fault of the evil George Bush (insert favorite 'bad buy')
Therefore we will do the same thing again, and again, without changes until it works.
An example of insanity?
Maddox| 3.2.12 @ 9:24AM
But they are so much more intellectual, they will make it work. The trouble is, it will work for the chosen few but not for us. The ignorant masses who believe in hope and chains have no clue what lies ahead.
Jacob R| 3.3.12 @ 8:43AM
I think you've got it..some may be stupid, but there are many who it IS working out for. That's the thing about leftists, they claim to love the poor but they secretly would be even happier if all the poor and middle class would be euthanized, aborted or sterilized, leaving only a swank, artsy elite class of leftist technologists (Bill Gates constantly enunciates this plan forgetting that he's a dork who got lucky and not some kind of Christ, come to save history).
ENOUGH ROPE| 3.3.12 @ 11:43AM
Think how to dismantle 70% of the Federal Government before it enslaves us.
Stan Redmond| 3.2.12 @ 1:23PM
Nah. They blame the Jews in Europe.
PolishKnight| 3.2.12 @ 9:07AM
It's not about the intentions, it's about being part of a winning team. Politics, to the left, is like being a sport's fan. I've pointed out that they haven't achieved any of their goals. Their multicultural policies are making European cities into American inner cities that they choose to limosine out of while simultaneously they aren't achieving any of their stated goals in the states other than to take it down to avoid embarrassment over the destruction of Europe. BUT they've won elections where even the "conservatives" of Europe are like "blue dog" democrats here.
Timothy L. Pennell| 3.2.12 @ 10:56AM
Paul Krugman. He's like a one man "Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight".
According to the Recipient of the Nobel Prize's Economic version of Obama's Peace Prize, the Massive, Unsustainable WELFARE STATE, is not the problem. After all, Sweden has a Welfare System, and their Population of a couple hundred thousand Alcoholics, are doing just fine, thank you very much.
No. It's not the Welfare State. It's a "LACK OF MONEY".
Think about what Idiot said, there. Let it sink in to your brain. It's NOT that the Welfare State is spending all of the money on a Cradle to Grave, Nanny State, Utopia. "It's because there's no money."
Now, to the casual observer, Mr. Krugman sounds like a Dumb*ss x 10. He sounds like he's out of his mind, delusional, and the look on his face as he gives you his reasoning, makes you wonder if he was wearing a Straight Jacket, right up until the Show started.
As stupid as Mr. Rat Face is, he's even something worse than that. He's a True Believer. He's a Fellow Traveler. And he would DIE in the BUNKER with these beliefs, before he would ever acknowledge the TRUTH.
He's the Picture in the Dictionary, that accompanies the Definition of INSANITY. What he wants, can never be achieved without FORCE. It has always relied on Murder, and Torture, and Prisons, and Work Farms, and GENOCIDE, to survive. It is the Ideological Economic Equivalent of a Concentration Camp.
We are Human beings, with Minds and Souls and Aspirations. We can never be herded about like Domesticated Bovine, for any length of time. We will always, eventually, Rise up and overthrow those whom Machiavelli describes in his tomes.
Eastern Europe learned the hard way. The Russians learned the hard way, but they are a Dead Man Walking, when it comes to a Functioning Society. And their inability to stay Sober, or have Children, make them ripe for the Oligarchy that they now serve under. Now, it is the rest of Europe who seeks to avoid a hard fall.
The premise of this article is not accurate. Europe is not The American Left's Nightmare. It's ours. The only lesson that they will take away from all of this, is that they haven't gone Far ENOUGH.
They will do what they always do. They will DIG DEEPER, as a means to get out of the Hole. More Taxes. More Spending. More payoffs to their followers.
If you're not getting ready? You should. If you can't Defend your Family? You need to make arrangements to remedy that situation.
These people will not go quietly in to the night. They've been around since the Dawn of Civilization.
Like any good Soldier. We have to Pray for the best, and PREPARE for the worst.
It's gonna get HEATED this Summer.
Mark My Words.
Fredrick Ward| 3.2.12 @ 12:59PM
Yeah, a lack of Other People's Money causes significant problems for Liberals because they just can't spend their own, and they always run out of OPM. So when they do run out they decide to tax the hell out of everyone to try to get more of OPM.. the problem is that when they do that businesses and jobs go down the drain and they are stuck with the same problem.. more people who are in a situation where they cannot find work and must rely on the welfare system who do not provide more OPM to the Liberal system which is constantly growing. Therefore, the lack of money is epidemic in this scenario.
Being a Liberal who subscribes to these principles is like a man chained between two horses who is being ripped apart. All the while he is saying everything is fine, and refuses help. They deserve death, but then it would be only civil if they would do it without taking the rest of us with them.
PolishKnight| 3.2.12 @ 6:46PM
Poland is doing very well economically and "staying sober" and somehow has not yet become a victim of diversity because of a lack of lucrative welfare benefits compared to West Germany, France, and England.
While the birth rate in Poland is low, I don't think that's a problem provided they don't have invaders, er, loose immigration. HEALTHY modern societies should have declining populations. We don't need 10 people per acre to harvest wheat anymore. The only reason why increasing populations are considered desirable are to keep ponzi pension schemes afloat, or for lots of cannon-fodder conscripts (which helped to start wars rather than prevent them) but are not as important in a post nuclear era or to help utilize vast resources (applicable in the USA when the population was the same as Poland today, but now we have plenty of people to clog up the highways, thanks.)
My friends in Poland are frustrated, however, that they're going through the same cultural rot as us with millions of Polish women now getting high paying jobs and access to consumer goods and the inability of Polish men to live up to the traditional provider role. That helps to not only kill birthrates but also society in general along with the general economy. This is a problem that most conservatives are not addressing and too busy with stalingrad issues such as abortion or gay marriage.
C. S. P. Schofield| 3.2.12 @ 9:27AM
It's worse than that. For the self selected Intellectual Elite Left, what matters is that their STATED intentions mark them as morally superior to the rest of us peasants.
Alan Brooks| 3.2.12 @ 1:27PM
Europe's skoolz are better than America's. What America does best is agriculture, not skoolz.
And it isn't about teechur's unions: America thinks of its students as commodities,
or hamburgers at McDonalds; "over 30 million served."
America can do business-- nothing more.
Dennis| 3.2.12 @ 5:58PM
Based on international math and science scores, most countries have better screwels than we do. Our public "education" system is little more than a means of progressive indoctrination -- progressing us right back to the 18th century.
Renard| 3.2.12 @ 9:47PM
Alan, I have read your drivel far too long now. I know who you are. You are the smarty-pants kid from 8th grade. You were no doubt a bit "smarter" than the other kids, but you were also absolutely despised by them.
To this day, 30-some years later, you are still despised by your colleagues!
Bobloblaw| 3.4.12 @ 6:27PM
Alan were are Europe's innovators???
Europe hasnt invented or new product in generations
StanO| 3.28.12 @ 2:17PM
While I don't completely disagree, keep in mind that we are the wealthiest nation in the world (with populations over 1million) when you take living standards into account. How do you explain that? Because we're all a bunch of nitwits?
What the problem is is cultural. We are turning into intellectual "haves" and "have nots". Students that have parents that care (or parents at home, engaged in their lives, etc) take better, harder classes, learn more than the last generation. The other half, drifts through, even goes to college, but it's all useless. One will be leaders the other scraping by.
Notra Bumma| 3.2.12 @ 9:35PM
And don't forget: just to be fair.
Thomas| 4.30.12 @ 9:44PM
You miss the point. For the right it matters not if things work as long as ones intentions are evil.
spike59| 3.2.12 @ 6:48AM
i think Margaret Thatcher summed it up best: "Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them."
Alan Brooks| 3.2.12 @ 1:29PM
If you asked Thatcher she could tell you English schools are superior to America's.
Europe's socialist schools are better than our socialist schools!
Al Adab| 3.2.12 @ 2:59PM
"The business of America is business."
Brian Mc| 3.2.12 @ 3:00PM
I wonder who's been in charge of our school system? It's amazing how people will treat something of value when given the item in question without any investment on their part.
Alan Brooks| 3.2.12 @ 3:29PM
IMO America was more liberal in the '60s-but schools were better then; so I don't think liberalism is the cause of scholastic decline..but if it makes you feel validated to blame it on liberalism, go ahead, let it be your delusion, not mine.
Christopher C| 3.2.12 @ 3:56PM
If you look closely, you will notice a decline in US school's performance that quite closely tracks the rise in teacher unionization. The trend first became significant in the 60s. It has been downhill for performance and up slope for the unions ever since.
Mike Hawk| 3.2.12 @ 8:07PM
Until the 60's local school boards ran the schools. THe NEA was not a union and the Dept of Education did not exist. Since then the NEA/ DOE axis has taken control away from the local districts and centered it with the Unions and the Feds. All a recipe for crumbling the entire infrastructure.
Dennis| 3.2.12 @ 5:59PM
Liberals do not teach. They indoctrinate.
SGT James Baker| 3.28.12 @ 10:29AM
Just wish to point out, that when you compare our schools to European schools you are not comparing apples to apples. For example, it is assumed in our high schools that most students are going to college, not so in European countries. If you do not test high enough before high school, you do not go to high school, you go to a trade school. So when you compare high schools to each other, theirs are going to score better to start with since they have the cream of the crop so to speak as compared to ours which have every student. Just something to think about.
StanO| 3.28.12 @ 2:18PM
And yet financially they are inferior to Americans.
Von Mises Jr.| 3.2.12 @ 4:53PM
The "BIG" lie is that Greece was bailed out by the EU and Germany. Greece just defaulted.
Most of the debt the EU forgave was the investment of Greek bond holders. They got 30 cents on the dollar and zero interest. This has several implications:
- Like Obama and GM/Chrysler, the investors got hosed while the government claimed they saved the day. Nonsense!
- Just as the U.S. markets have crawled to a halt in volume, this has the potential to seize European markets even more.
- And of course, who in their right minds would invest in Greek bonds moving forward???
They have finally reached the point where they should have the same expectation of a crack addict expecting his brothers to lend him money. Fat chance.
Appleby| 3.2.12 @ 6:49AM
My youngest sister, who has never been farther from home than New York (and a trip to Canada when she was 4) maintains that she is not at all advocating socialism when she cries that it's not "fair" that some people earn and get to keep millions of dollars when other people "have to scrape by", and that people like Mitt Romney ought to be deprived of everything she firmly believes belongs to her, no matter how they got them.
Toxic envy is at the root of the belief that socialism can somehow work -- that somehow people with Options (as I keep reminding her that the Rich Folks have and use) can be forced to "share" and will then continue to produce goodies for people whose sole contribution to society is to hold out their Easter Baskets to be loaded up with goodies.
After living in Canada for 13 years I have concluded that socialism doesn't work because it can't possibly work. Why the Europeans can't see this is beyond me. Perhaps they want it to work so badly that they think their wishes have magical power.
Renaissance Nerd | 3.2.12 @ 9:59AM
Socialism is the natural state of civilization. They try to pretend it's new, but it's just the original priest-king paradigm under new names. Priest-kings were never able to rule alone; they needed a bureaucracy of priests to run things for them, to keep the peasants placated, the artisans cowed, the merchants from getting above themselves, and the warriors hating. Socialism in all its varieties is just a new edition of the original civilized government. We tend to think of the American way as old-fashioned, but it's really one of a very few new things in history. The Roman Republic and Greek democracies retained lots of the original socialist trappings, but our republic actually tried something new, and thank heaven for George Washington who set the example of giving up power voluntarily. It's not surprising that people yearn towards socialism, because if there's one thing ubiquitous in the human condition it's the desire to have somebody else to blame for our own shortcomings. A socialist system, whether governed by Pharaoh or Pol Pot, gives people an escape from individual responsibility, as they're just little cogs in the grand machine. Individualism is scary and dangerous, because it means accepting responsibility for one's actions. It's unnatural to do so; a natural man or woman wants somebody else to blame, and must be convinced by a judicious combination of reason, example, anecdote, and fiction that they ARE free, and that they SHOULD be free. Freedom withers if it is not supported, and in my opinion the reason it's withering in America is the neglect of fiction by those who argue on liberty's behalf. For every Mel Gibson screaming 'FREEDOM' there are a hundred other movies about the down and out and the nefarious forces that make them into such vile people. Same goes for books, TV, etc. That's where freedom-lovers have truly failed.
don| 3.2.12 @ 12:56PM
I always believed 'socialism' is the new 'feudalism' with better (deceitful) branding. I see we are in a race now. What goes 'bankrupt' first. The 'free-market' or the government. If the market goes first, the Socialists step in and take it over. If the government goes first, maybe we can get our Republic back. So I would urge anyone and everyone to max out whatever government benefits you can...food stamps, housing assistnace, student loans, medicaid, etc. - the Clower Piven strategy really works more for us than for them.
idalily| 3.2.12 @ 4:24PM
Yep. Socialism is feudalism redux. Serfs or "workers." State or king. What's the difference? None. Both are a giving up of liberty to have security.
StanO| 3.28.12 @ 2:23PM
Very good post. I had a Dutch boss at one time that commented that "though I love America, it is scary, you can't let up" and it's true. To quote Spiderman's uncle "With great power comes great responsibility".
Drake| 3.2.12 @ 7:46AM
We love doing business in Sweden - strong currency and much lower corporate tax rates than the U.S. Is that so complicated?
Sweden has fewer people than many of our states. While they do have high personal tax rates and lots of government benefits, their "big government" is still very small.
The Swedes I have worked with are stunned at the level of government interference in American businesses. The permits they get once, we get from a city, then a state, then the federal government. Then the EPA, OSHA, and all rest come out of the woodwork.
ec| 3.2.12 @ 8:05AM
Federal debt is taxation without representation and inhibits liberty's pursuit of happiness for the soon-to-be-born.
trw| 3.2.12 @ 8:18AM
Socialists know that socialism does not work. They have always know this since , at the latest, the late 1940's.
Their mental and moral disease is their own evil. Socialists have the hubris and the arrogance, the vanity to believe that they will always be in the party elite, cushioned and removed from the grime and grind.
Socialism is really just domination of the 90 - 95% by the few. It is not so different than must other 'isms' and 'ships.'
Renaissance Nerd | 3.2.12 @ 10:01AM
Of course socialism works. It just doesn't do what the propagandists claim. It's true purpose is to enrich an elite--it does that exceptionally well.
donserge| 3.2.12 @ 8:24AM
Recent polls place Sarcoszy well behind his socialist opponent who is running on a platform of drastically raising taxes 'on the rich'. Once a people have figured out how to get 'free money' from someone else it is extremely difficult to wean them off that.
numbatdog| 3.2.12 @ 8:35AM
Don't hold your breath waiting for the realities of socialism to strike home with the American left. It will never happen.
Failure after failure by leftist regimes are always explained away by
- They didn't do it right
- Their socialism wasn't pure enough
-The Capitalists sabotaged the system.
- They just needed more time. (and money)
Obama's regime is no slouch at excuses for it's failures.
- Bush did it all. Everything from A - Z
- The weather, global warming.
-The Japanese tsunami, Chinese imports or Israel causing trouble in the Middle East.
- We just need more time. (And money)
PolishKnight| 3.2.12 @ 9:10AM
Or in the words of Animal Farm: It's all Boxer's fault! He stole the key even when it was later found under hay!
The left LOVES the right as a useful fool to blame their failures upon and, as an added bonus, they can engage in class and race warfare as a reward to their electorates.
Secretly, they love Chinese imports because private industry manufacturing jobs didn't produce voters like government unions and welfare recipients did so they could care less. They don't want a paper mill next to their government office or suburban home anyway.
Buck Ofama| 3.2.12 @ 9:14AM
Also: "Equality of effort is irrelevant; equality of reward is paramount."
Tenn Slim| 3.2.12 @ 8:51AM
Opine
Regardless, the Obama Czar led CHI town cohorts will continue to press forward with their version of Social Democracy. 2012 election will be won at all cost. The Left will never go quitely into the night.
Conservatives, Fly Over US electorates, will continue to scrap futilily among thier RHINO offerings and the US Republic will succomb.
Pessimistic, You Bet. Realism, Yep.
SURVIVE is the watch word now.
Semper FI
Buck Ofama| 3.2.12 @ 9:12AM
In 1990, my French girlfriend told me about how great it was to live in France: her ex-hubby got 8 weeks of vacation; his father retired from postal service at 50, etc.
I would always tell her, "Someone has to pay for it."
Not sure she ever understood that.
Maddox| 3.2.12 @ 9:21AM
We have relatives who live there and they still brag about their 8 weeks of vacation. Sheep.
PolishKnight| 3.2.12 @ 9:55AM
Even Mark Steyn observed that Americans are not much better and have "live free or die" bumper stickers and then proceed to the airport for a strip search. If you're going to be a sheep, at least get some vacation out of it.
The goal of the left is to make America suck worse than Socialist Europe in order to "win" the argument that socialism is better than capitalism. In the meantime, I have to concede they have a point. Our capitalist overlords don't seem terribly concerned about losing our votes or the battle and perhaps because they have climbed into bed with the socialists and provide former Democrat politicians and their relatives with comfy "consulting" and speaking gigs. So if a bunch of low-wage Mexicans or H1B's decide to vote for Dems to up the above million dollar tax rate to 80% or more, it's rather hard for me to care.
Al Adab| 3.2.12 @ 10:16AM
Europe has been able to live out its socialist dream for the last fifty years solely because of the American hegemon. They needed to pay little for defense, they paid little for defelopment and all because the American nation covered those needs. What they failed to do and what the American Left fails to understand is that those demands did not go away they were simply transfered to another payer. The question for us is not whether to follow their social model, we should not, but whether to continue to pay their "overhead" costs and cover their debt. We should not. Our own needs, debt and otherwise, no exceed our ability to pay. We must fix our own home before we aid our long recovered friends.
evinrude| 3.2.12 @ 5:16PM
They also ground a lot of their better educated youth through U.S. technical, electronics, medical, and engineering skills while their own faltered.
Six years ago a much ballyhooed study came out that showed that only England and France possessed on the European continent three universities that scored in the top 30 of the world's best universities.
This infuriated the Germans but they only had themselves to blame.
My point: In addition to the skimmed off benefits that Europe has had off Uncle Sam's back, add an education bonus for about 2% of the best of Europe's brainy kids over the last 30 years.
Just Cal Poly Tech alone smothers anything close to what exists at any European school.
PolishKnight| 3.2.12 @ 7:27PM
One word evinrude: Sputnik!
Mike Hawk| 3.2.12 @ 8:25PM
Aside from overrated wine and arrogance what else do the French have?? They can export wine but not arrogance. Otherwise they don't produce anything anymore the rest of the world wants.
James Biggar| 3.3.12 @ 9:00PM
Funny looking cars? Comme Le Peugeot.
StanO| 3.28.12 @ 2:25PM
We have to understand that we are different. Most of the world does not understand "Live Free or Die" or "Don't Tread on Me". That's why some Europeans come here and just don't want to leave and others are appalled.
tdiinva| 3.2.12 @ 9:29AM
It is a misconception on both the left and right to equate social democracy with "socialism." Social Democracy owes far more to Benito Mussolini than it does to Karl Marx.
(this may be a repeat posting)
Renaissance Nerd | 3.2.12 @ 10:03AM
Only too true. I usually call Democrats petite-fascists for that reason. That's what social democracy is, a wussy form of fascism.
idalily| 3.2.12 @ 4:28PM
But for the prols, is there really any difference between socialism and fascism? Aside from academic definitions, there is NO difference. Both are totalitarian. Both suck. Both deprive the average citizen of his liberty, his property, and often his life.
Mike Hawk| 3.2.12 @ 8:21PM
Fascism and Nazism (NAtional Socialist Workers Party) both a variation on a theme. Totalitarianism by an oligarchy.
Blackwatch| 3.4.12 @ 1:02PM
Socialism takes your weapons for the benefit of a peaceful society. Then they assign you an overlord and you get to be their serf.
Facism takes your weapons then kills you.
StanO| 3.28.12 @ 2:27PM
Technically, you would say it's a question of scale. With Communism on the far left, then Fascism, then Socialism.
Bob S| 3.2.12 @ 9:36AM
What we see in the United States is a desire of the progressives for "utopian socialism". The thing they seem incapable of believing is "utopian socialism" has never been achieved. The utopian nature of this dream allows them to fall back on "they just did not do it the right way" and "we know how to do it the right way".
For many, they recognize the evils of German, Russian, and Chinese socialism but that is not relevant to their vision. Those are not examples of what they wish to achieve. I believe this is a factor in why the progressives react so violently to claims they are socialists.
Jim Woodward| 3.2.12 @ 10:07AM
I've often contemplated the following scenario.
Take forty men and women. All Democrat/ Liberal/Progressives. Ten from the House, ten from the Senate, ten from the state controlled media and ten from academia and put them on a lush, uninhabited tropical island with fresh water, lots of coconut palms and great fishing.
Leave a six month supply of dried food, some clothing, hand tools, seed, lumber, fishing nets, tents etc. , the basic survival needs jammed into a cargo container to get them started.
Ignore them for a year and come back and see whats happened.
Any thoughts?
Al Adab| 3.2.12 @ 11:22AM
Some will have more and others less. Those with less will take from those with more and, a review of the settlement of Pitcairn Island by the Bounty mutineers will demonstrate, they will fight for the goods. No social utopia at all.
skip| 3.2.12 @ 11:36AM
I've often contemplated the following scenario.
Take a selection of liberals from politics, media and academia and put them in front of a camera for national broadcast.
Hook each of them up to a polygraph machine and an electric shock machine. Explain to them they are each to answer ten questions each on social issues, political issues, economic issues, religious issues, and scientific issues.
Explain to each of them they will receive an electric shock for ten seconds every time they answer a question with a lie. Explain to each of them they will receive a ten percent increase in the strength of the ten second electric shock for each additional lie. Force every single American citizen to watch the broadcast.
skip| 3.2.12 @ 11:51AM
I've often contemplated the following scenario.
Take all wealth from every American citizen, rich and poor alike, and redistribute this wealth equally to every American citizen, so each of the 313 million have exactly the same amount of wealth.
Leave every American citizen with equal wealth to pursue happiness in liberty. Assume justice will prevail, that no American citizen will be allowed to get away with lying or cheating or stealing. Assume government will not interfere with each American citizen enjoying their freedom to choose based on risk versus reward.
Watch and wait until the distribution of wealth returns to roughly the same percentages in America today. Determine the length of time elapsed for this to occur.
Jim Woodward| 3.2.12 @ 12:35PM
Skip,
Kudos! I like each one! We can dream!
Al Adab| 3.2.12 @ 12:46PM
Perhaps we could leave it to Godfather to decide which of us needs what.
Brian Mc| 3.2.12 @ 3:12PM
Great stuff, Skip. One glaring point if I may...we do not need socialism. But, socialism must have capitalists. Oh, we need ten questions.
Al Adab| 3.2.12 @ 4:33PM
Good point there Brian, hence Atlas Shrugged.
MachiasPrivateer| 3.2.12 @ 10:39AM
All this is contingent on that dummkopf Angela Merkel changing her idiotic decision to keep Germany's nuclear power plants off-line! She is begging for Washington Public Power Supply System II (WHOOPS!). We all know how badly that turned out! http://tinyurl.com/7hvzzy6
Ron| 3.2.12 @ 1:59PM
The problem is that Socialism has become a religion for the left...No matter how many failures are chalked up (and spare me the idea Sweden or Switzerland are really socialist - the are capitalists top to bottom) they are looking for the magical cure-all that will make it work...Running out of other people's money presents no problem, they will eventually just print more...
robert derrick| 3.2.12 @ 2:34PM
One fact of life to ALWAYS keep in mind when dealing with liberals and soiclist dictators: they are not TRYING to make it 'work'. Economic success is NOT their goal. Personal Power is. Period. When it comes to the lust of money and the lust of power, Power triumphs, because usurping unjust personal power over other individuals is a FAR MORE enticing evil, than simply wanting to be on top of the money chain. If liberals wanted more money going to GVT, they would reduce taxes and set businesses free. If they wanted a 'propserous' country, they would get out of the way, and set individuals free. Remember, in the end it wasn't at all about Marxism or Nazism propsering or helping people, but rather about Lenin and Hitler advancing their own personal power over them...and now by seditious and pusillanious means, the liberals want the same for us: Americans.
cicero| 3.2.12 @ 5:11PM
For once, it seems that the Europeans have decided to imitate the Americans. After all of the posturing, they ran for cover, and agreedd to have the ECB bail out the European bankers, just as the Americans bailed out the American bankers - including those who ran private investment banks. That short $trillion that the ECB threw at th banks was for the purpose of buying all those worthless soveriegn bonds that the banks were holding. Of course, Greece and the other issuers are no more likely to repay the ECB than they were the regular banks. That means that the European taxpayers will be left to pay for sthe shortfall when the ECB prints worthless euros to cover their losses - read QE at our Fed.
They all know what they are doing. They party with the bigs, so they don't want their friends to take a loss and feel bad. Better to stick it to those poor bastards who will have their savings wiped out, and will have to eat their children.
Tony in Central PA| 3.2.12 @ 6:11PM
For the left in America, failures are not examined, they are ignored as a matter of orthodoxy.
Tator| 3.3.12 @ 5:29AM
Europe and America will not escape what has happened to every country/empire since the beginning...
In all of history, no government became more honest, less corrupt, or granted its citizens more rights as it grew in size.
-E.L.
So they will both fail. The question is, in what form.
Richard Baker| 3.3.12 @ 7:22AM
The baloney knows the meat grinder.
shipley130| 3.3.12 @ 4:58PM
Socialism should be against the law in America.
cmhmd| 3.3.12 @ 6:54PM
You all know you have liberal friends, co-workers, and neighbors, right? Do you think they are all demonic scum? Too stupid to live? Really?
Does this demonization really help, or does the feeling of superiority just make you feel, dare I say it, elite?
Blackwatch| 3.4.12 @ 1:10PM
No we don't wish them dead. But they are too stupid to be trusted with their votes.
StanO| 3.28.12 @ 2:34PM
Most of those people are not bound in orthodoxy. The are busy with kids, school, work etc. They just accept what they hear in school, see on TV or in the newspaper. They don't analyze or think about it. Not demonic, usually just a bit lazy in their thoughts. Schools have become indoctrination camps, heaven forbid they would teach the Constitution or Adam Smith.
Bobloblaw| 3.4.12 @ 6:24PM
Dont fool yourself for one second that the American left knows that leftist economics dont work. They will work with the right people. When utopia fails to materialize they will blame conservsatives. Even if conservatives are in the minority. We see this frequently in CA. Blame the GOP even though the GOP has barely 33% of the Assembly Seats.
Even when all the conservatives are done away with and utopia still fails to materialize, the left will then blame those leftists who arent true believers ie Trotsky.
Timely Renewed | 3.5.12 @ 1:23AM
We are on the path to the European decline Mr. Gregg describes, and have been for long time before the current administration. In order to permanently move off this path, we must restore the original constitutional limits on the federal government. Given the deep entrenchment of the special interests and Supreme Court decisions which sustain the unconstitutional expansion of federal power since the New Deal, we must use amendments to the Constitution to restate and re-affirm the original constitutional meaning and structure. See http://www.timelyrenewed.com
Brian| 3.6.12 @ 12:37AM
Socialism is not an economic system. It's about power. It's about a jack boot on the neck of the ppl. Armegeddon is the goal.