The Psychology Of The Social Deconstructionist Movement.

OK, so in my previous post I outlined the most over-arching characteristics of what I call " Social Deconstructionism". Let's g o ahead and try to figure out not WHAT these folks believe-that is all too obvious-but WHY they believe such insane rubbish.

People who describe themselves (and are described by others) as "Social Deconstructionists", "leftists", "socialists", "social democrats", "Communists" and (in North America) "liberals" do have some things in common. And that is important. However unsatisfactory and apparently simplistic the Left/Right division of the political world may be, there is any amount of research showing it to be a powerful, ubiquitous and perhaps inescapable way of identifying both people and political parties (e.g. Budge et al., 1987; Ray, 1982; Bobbio, 1996).

An important part of what I proposed was that what Social Deconstructionists basically want does not have to be the exact opposite or mirror-image of what Rightists basically want -- and vice versa. This may seem at first surprising but does have some precedents. Kerlinger (1967) suggested that Social Deconstructionists and Rightists have different "criterial referents" and even thought that he had found in his survey research a complete lack of opposition between Social Deconstructionist and Rightist attitudes. Kerlinger's reasoning is interesting but that he misinterpreted his research results has previously been shown in Ray (1980 & 1982). Whether Social Deconstructionist and Rightist objectives are opposite or just simply different, how Social Deconstructionists and Rightists go about achieving their different basic objectives certainly generates plenty of conflict and opposition between the two sides.

My basic proposal, then, is that most (but not all) Social Deconstructionists/liberals are motivated by strong ego needs -- needs for power, attention, praise and fame. And in the USA and other developed countries they satisfy this need by advocating large changes in the society around them -- thus drawing attention to themselves and hopefully causing themselves to be seen as wise, innovative, caring, noble intellectuals  etc. Rightists by contrast have no need either for change or its opposite and may oppose change if they see it as destructive or favour change if they see it as constructive.

We will see below why one of the most consistent themes to emerge from the Social Deconstructionist's love of change is the claimed need for "equality". And the belief in "equality" also tends to lead to support for such things as redistribution of wealth generally, heavily "progressive" income taxes, inheritance taxes, foreign aid, feminism, gay rights and socialized medicine. Again for reasons explored below, Social Deconstructionists also tend to oppose religion and the churches and this in turn tends to mean that they favor abortion and oppose or obstruct religious schooling in various ways. So let us now briefly look at some of these characteristic Social Deconstructionist/liberal themes to see how they relate to basic Social Deconstructionist motives.

Human Nature

Something that Social Deconstructionists have had in common from the beginning is the rejection of any idea of "human nature". Basically, Social Deconstructionists seem to believe that "education" can change almost anything in human behavior. This root and branch rejection of heredity was of course what underlay Stalin's support of Lysenko's otherwise thoroughly discredited theory of evolution -- the idea that characteristics acquired in one's lifetime can be passed on to one's offspring, something Darwin rejected in toto. So how do such views flow from a yen for change? 

Quite obviously, any idea of human nature says that important things about human beings just CANNOT be changed and that does not suit the change-loving Social Deconstructionists at all. So Social Deconstructionists simply reject what does not suit them -- regardless of the enormous evidence in favor of inherited characteristics. The entire discipline of behavior genetics should not exist from a Social Deconstructionist point of view.

Conservatives, by contrast, not only have the view that there are important and essentially ineradicable inherited human characteristics but they share with Christians the view that those characteristics are of a "fallen" kind: characteristics of selfishness, aggressiveness, untrustworthiness etc. That Christians and conservatives share such a central belief about human nature is of course a large element in the general compatibility between Christianity and conservatism and the frequent opposition between Christians and Social Deconstructionists (e.g. "Godless" Communism versus the Roman Catholic church).

This conservative (and scientific) rejection of the Social Deconstructionist idea that human beings are infinitely malleable AND infinitely predictable ( an assertion Lord Keynes also posits), does of course pose a major threat to the Social Deconstructionist's assumptions, theories and programs and it is one that the Social Deconstructionist cannot really rebut so the usual Social Deconstructionist response is simply an ad hominem one: To abuse and demonize conservatives for lacking "compassion". Abuse, therefore and necessarily, takes the place of argument (Krauthammer, 2002). And in the same sentence, Social Deconstructionists will then accuse any perceived opponent of a total lack of rationality or logical thought! How did they get there?

The United States faces overwhelming fiscal problems. Our current level of government spending and future entitlement obligations are simply unsustainable. However, as concerning as these fiscal matters are, the biggest problem America faces has nothing to do with economics, but rather psychology. 

The strength of a nation reflects the character of its citizens. While America was once considered a nation of individuals fiercely independent and self-reliant, her citizens are moving closer to a state of dependence, characterized by irresponsibility and ambivalence. This change has been instigated by the politics of collectivism and the growth of the social welfare state. The most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.


To understand how this alteration occurs, one must first understand the psychological concept known as locus of control. In 1954, American psychologist Julian Rotter introduced the concept that describes how individuals could be divided into two basic groups, which represent two ends of a continuum (Figure 1): internals believe that their locus of control is within themselves, and externals believe that they are under the control of outside forces. According to Lee Harris, author of The Next American Civil War:


"[Internals] believe that they are the masters of their own destiny; they tend to be high-achievers, optimistic about their ability to improve their lot, and to discard bad habits. They believe in willpower and positive thinking. They are determined to control their own lives, for better or worse. [Externals] look on themselves as victims of circumstances, the playthings of fate. If they go to bed drunk, light up a cigarette, and burn their house down, they explain the disaster as another instance of their bad luck, and not their poor judgment, much less their bad habits."



Based on Harris's description, it is simple to understand why having an internal locus of control is desirable, while having an external locus is not. Furthermore, individuals can move along the continuum in response to external factors. American psychologist Martin Seligman's experiments provided an explanation for why and how movement occurs along the continuum.

This concept came to be known as learned helplessness. 

Learned helplessness explains how an individual can move from an area on the continuum characterized as internal to one characterized as external, and while this condition can be induced by pain, it can also be induced by many kinder, gentler ways. 



In "The Conscience of a Conservative", Barry Goldwater described what he believed would ultimately be the consequences of social welfare on the psyche of its beneficiaries.



"The effect of welfarism on freedom will be felt later on -- after its beneficiaries have become its victims, after dependence on government has turned into bondage and it is too late to unlock the jail."



Real-world examples of how modern entitlement programs have done harm to their beneficiaries are boldly presented in libertarian political scientist Charles Murray's Losing Ground. What makes this book stand out, according to Brian Doherty, senior editor of Reason magazine and author of Radicals for Capitalism, is that - 

“Murray does not rely on the 'welfare cheat' rhetoric ... he took a different tone and approach to the free market assault on welfare, speaking in a voice clearly concerned with the fate of the poor and blacks, about incentives and productivity and self-respect ... He uses trendline analyses to show that any improvement in the lives of the poor that happened after [the late 1960s wave of income transfer] programs went into effect was merely a continuation of progress that had begun long before the federal effort did -- and that the progress in most cases stopped as the 1970s began and the program's effects became clear. Crime and unemployment went up for the poor as the welfare state grew in the 1960s; income and educational achievement went down.”


According to Charles Murray, the author of "The inspiration for Losing Ground" - 


"grew out of sixteen years of watching people who run social programs ... I was struck by two things. First, the people who were doing the helping did not succeed nearly as often as they deserved to ... Second, the relationship between the ways people were to be helped and the quality of their lives became increasingly confused." 

Murray's policy recommendation to improve the social condition and self-esteem of America's poor, which emanated from his personal experience and dedicated research, was to eliminate all racial preference programs, institute educational vouchers, and eliminate all income transfer programs, later reinstating short-term unemployment insurance. 

Murray's research provides compelling evidence that suggests that social welfare programs are harming their recipients via the learned helplessness mechanism. 

However, there is something even worse than creating codependency on government through entitlement programs, according to Lee Harris. 

"This occurs whenever a deliberate campaign encourages people to think of themselves as victims. Victims are not in charge of their own lives and destinies."

 The victimization mentality is closely related to having an external locus of control. As a consequence of this mentality, people who consider themselves victims erect invisible barriers around themselves from which they cannot escape. Like Seligman's dogs, they give up trying because they don't believe they are free to succeed.

The victimization mentality is advantageous for left-wing politicians, who rely on their constituents' needing government benefits. Remember Hillary Clinton declaring, "I am the candidate for individuals who need government"? Unfortunately, the spread of this mentality foreshadows a poor prognosis for the survival of freedom in America. 

The Making of a Social Deconstructionist

The appeal of Social Deconstruction to the average person is simple: The Social Deconstructionist offers something for nothing. And that is always hard to resist -- fraudulent though it usually is. If the Social Deconstructionist offers to redistribute somebody else's wealth into your pocket, that is one hell of an appealling scam to those who stand to benefit from it.

But the Social Deconstructionist's advocacy of equality is not all it seems. The Social Deconstructionist's passion for equality is only apparently a desire to lift the disadvantaged up. In reality it is a hatred of all those in society who are already in a superior or more powerful or more prosperous position to the Social Deconstructionist and a desire to cut them down to size. Social Deconstructionists really aim at (and sometimes succeed at) the equality of making everyone poor rather than the equality of making everyone rich. 

This explains the common puzzle of why it is that modern-day "liberals" are still indulgent about the old Soviet system. As Amis (2002) points out, the many people in literary and academic circles today who once supported Stalin and his heirs are generally held blameless and may even still be admired whereas anybody who gave the slightest hint of support for the similarly brutal Hitler regime is an utter polecat and pariah. Why? Because Hitler's enemies were "only" the Jews whereas Stalin's enemies were those the modern day Left still hates -- people who are doing well for themselves materially. Actually, in Niall Ferguson's' epic "The War Of The World", he correctly points out that Stalin was persecuting non-Muscovite Russian ethnicities, while working for Lenin! So Stalins' racist policies were staggeringly more encompassing than even the Nazis'!! Modern day Social Deconstructionists understand and excuse Stalin and his supporters because Stalin's hates are their hates. 

Much the same explanation applies, of course, to the similar puzzle of why the French military dictator, Napoleon, is to this day generally regarded as a hero even though practically every family in the France of his day lost a son in his wars. The figures for Napoleon's Russian campaign alone are horrendous. He took 600,000 men into Russia but brought back only 70,000. In terms of loss of life, Napoleon's wars were every bit as bad for France as Hitler's wars were for Germany but Hitler is universally (and justly) reviled whereas Napoleon is still admired! Napoleon, however, justified all his actions as extending the French revolution to other lands and this explanation still resounds favorably with today's Left-leaning intellectuals. 

Such vast egotism and hunger for power and attention does of course make a mockery of the Social Deconstructionist's claim to be in favor of equality. Like the pigs in George Orwell's "Animal farm", the Social Deconstructionist wants to be "more equal than others". He wants to rule or at least dominate. Beneath his deceptive rhetoric, he is the ultimate elitist. He actually despises most of his fellow men and thinks that only he and his clique are fit to run everything. The last thing he wants is to be lost in a sea of equal people. This was of course amply shown in the Soviet Union, where membership of the Communist Party became the only pathway to the good life -- conferring on the member all sorts of privileges and access to goods and services not available to other Soviet citizens.

Another psychological motivation for Social Deconstruction that is sometimes mentioned is one that I have always had severe doubts about: Guilt. Or, more to the point, White Liberal Guilt.The claim is that affluent people feel bad (guilty) when they see how poorly others are doing and want to rectify that by getting handouts for the disadvantaged (but not from their own pockets of course). They are "limousine liberals". I have always seen this as just another Social Deconstructionist hoax: They may sometimes explain their motives in such a high-minded way but if they really felt guilty there is plenty they could do to help others rather than agitating to tax them to the eyeballs. 

The undoubted fact that Left activists and agitators (from the Bolsheviks on) tend to come from affluent families does not to me point to guilt as their motive at all. Rather the "limousine liberal" phenomenon shows me that those who have all that they want materially then seek other luxuries: such as self-righteousness, praise, power and excitement -- particularly the excitement of being demonstrators in the case of "rich kid" Social Deconstructionists. And if the young limousine liberal can have praise and self-righteousness along with his/her excitement what a good deal it is! It is much the same motivation that causes self-made rich men (such as Bill Gates) to become highly philanthropic. Bill Gates has power and wealth so he now seeks praise and righteousness.

There are, however, many other reasons for Social Deconstructionism:

Because of its pretensions to standing up heroically for various difficult causes, Social Deconstruction can seem "cool" to many of the unthinking young and not so young. Particularly in the worlds of academe, the media and entertainment, being Social Deconstructionist means being "in" with the "smart" crowd. Not to be Social Deconstructionist is to be left out. How awful! Even if such people can see faults in Social Deconstructionist thinking, they are afraid to come toward the Right for fear of losing the approval of others around them.

Some people become liberals because they are genuinely outraged by things that they do not understand and are unwise enough to want to change those things willy nilly. In particular, they may be genuinely grieved by the unhappy experiences of others and want to fix that ASAP without being wise enough to seek for means of fixing it that have some prospect of working or that are not self-defeating. They might, for instance, be disturbed by the impact of rising rents on the poor and propose rent-control as a quick-fix solution -- though a few minutes of thought or the most elementary inquiry should tell them that rent control will after a time also have the effect of degrading and shrinking the existing stock of rental accommodation and drying up the supply of new rental accommodation, both of which make the poor much worse off in the long run. Some are Social Deconstructionists because they are still young and unaware of most of life's complexities so that the drastically simple "solutions" and mantras proffered by the Left simply seem reasonable. Social Deconstruction has the appeal of simplicity.

Some Social Deconstructionists, again particularly the young, are idealists who find the imperfect state of the real world deeply unsatisfying. That there is some genuine idealism even among extreme Social Deconstructionists is shown by the exoduses from Communist Parties in the economically successful "Western" democracies that followed the violent Soviet suppression of the East German, Hungarian and Czechoslovak uprisings against Communist rule in 1953, 1956 and 1968. Once the real nature of Communist regimes became too clear to be denied, honest decent people whose wishful thinking had led them to believe Communist protestations of benevolence and good intentions saw the light and abandoned Communism. In the USA (in New York particularly), some liberal intellectuals even saw enough in the Soviet actions of those times to cause them to abandon "liberalism" and found neo-conservatism. Similarly in Australia of the 1950s and '60s, the Andersonian libertarians of Sydney were also intellectuals who might otherwise have been Social Deconstructionists but who were united by realism about Soviet brutality.

Some Social Deconstructionists know that they themselves are weird by general social standards so preach change towards greater tolerance for all weirdness out of sheer self-interest. As George Orwell said in "The road to Wigan pier":

"One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words socialism and communism draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, Nature-cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England...

"We have reached a stage when the very word socialism calls up, on the one hand, a picture of airplanes, tractors and huge glittering factories of glass and concrete; on the other, a picture of vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone), or earnest ladies in sandals, shock-headed Marxists chewing polysyllables, escaped Quakers, birth control fanatics, and Labour Party backstairs-crawlers.

"If only the sandals and pistachio-colored shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian, teetotaler and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly. As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents."

Well, more on this later... I have to take an aspirin, and lie down for awhile.

The Social Deconstructionist Agenda

This is a re-post - read it anyway!

define: social deconstructionist

I’ve used this term “social deconstructionist quite a bit, and some have asked “what the hell is THAT?”. Well, he is my best effort at explaining - and it takes a bit of doing, so here goes.

There are many fractionalized groups in this (or any other) country with seemingly “diverse” goals and objectives. Eco-feminists, anarchists, anti-globalists, La Raza and the Atzlan Movement, environmental extremists, radical gay & lesbian activists, Black Nationalists, Code Pink - ists, Marxist-Leninists, pro-pedophila (NAMBLA), anti-war activists, the “all-sex-is-rape crowd, and on and on. Seems a lot of groups around that all have different axes to grind... it seems. But there is one corrosive thread that runs through all of them. They all share a common hatred of what they call “white skin privilege”. What does this really mean?

Actually, it’s fairly simple. All these groups believe that white, European, Christian male culture has “oppressed’ them, over the millennia. And like their Marxist-Leninist brethren, they have learned to use the dialectic to argue their point, but like all practitioners of dialectics (who can argue that the law of gravity is a capitalist fraud), their arguments are just more tedious drivel.

That’s why these people give -
• Islam / Middle Eastern
• China
• Africa (except Israel, which is a white conspiracy)
• Russia (non-white white people - oppressed folks ya know)
• Any non-Christian, therefore non-European religion (despite the fact that, geographically, Christianity is an Eastern religion)
• Eskimos
• Native Americans (you know Indians... it’s OK for me to use that term because I am 1/4 Choctaw)
• All of South (“Latin” - how ironic!) America
• Anyone who hates the West, America, Europe (ESPECIALLY self-hating Europeans!).
gets a pass. A pass on anything, no matter how heinous... blowing up women and children as a deliberate tactic, mutilating women, slavery, piracy, kidnapping narco-terrorism, illegal immigration (it's human right ya know), random murder... you get the idea.

Now, do they all work together, like the Big Oil Companies? Do they gather together to conspire against us like Bill Gates and the Coven of 13 does every Halloween, at the Lord Mayor of London’s house to receive their orders from SATAN! Hmmmmm, well no, I don’t think so.

But their mutual derangement springs from the same fount, so therein lies the relationship - Most intellectuals like to find ways of joining in the struggle of the weak against the strong. So they hope that their particular gifts and competences can be made relevant to that struggle. The term most frequently used in recent decades to formulate this hope is "critique of ideology.", deconstruction being the preferred term / method of late, a method of literary and social critique that originated in France in the mid-20th century. and based on a theory that, by the very nature of language and usage, no text can have a fixed, coherent meaning. Since nothing has any meaning, anything goes. No evil, no good, no nuthin’. Do your own thing, all over everybody. If you're going to San Francisco...

Years ago, when I worked at Computer Sciences Corporation, at one of our lunchtime “how to save the world” bull sessions. I asked (to no one in particular) why a politician would deliberately want anarchy... to what purpose, as a tool of change or whatever. I was genuinely confused about it: history is replete with deliberate incitement of anarchy, and it never seems to turn out well. Ken Beale, turned to me, without batting an eye and said -”because when you have anarchy, everyone - and I mean everyone - has a shot at power.. That’s why. French Revolution, Russian Revolution, all the same. You have a period of wild-ass anarchy, followed by a totalitarian dictatorship. You end up with Napoleon or Stalin.”

So the objective is anarchy - because they all want that shot at power, not as a utopian system, which would be unworkable due to the vagaries of human nature. And this will be the ultimate undoing of the present incarnation of the Democrat party, if they don’t get their own act together. They will get the anarchy that they will claim they want, in order to keep hold onto the ever more fractionalized base. But if it comes, the fractionalized base will turn on them, then turn on each other.

Or maybe not. Maybe we, as a nation, will muddle though this mess and get through more or less OK. But we will be changed by it. How we are changed is up to us, the middle 60%.

REAL History

According to the logic of the American myth, all dictators, from Oliver Cromwell to Saddam Hussein, are evil autocrats trying to destroy freedomand democracy. This is clearly not the case. They are a fundamental andnecessary part of the revolutionary transition, which leads to only one place, democratic market society.It is true that some of these dictators have gotten out of hand. This wasespecially a problem back when conquering empires was considered to beacceptable behavior. It is entirely possible that some dictators in the present and the future will also cause more trouble than they are worth. It is probably a good idea for the world to have an emergency process for the removal of revolutionary dictators that cause too much trouble. In order for such aprocess to work, the world has to understand what dictators are and why theyare here.

Theory One-

One theory, which is the conventional wisdom of modern America, is based onthe World War II experience. It says that the world is in the midst of a war between the forces of democracy and the forces of dictatorship. It equates thisto the conflict between good and evil. According to this theory, evil dictators—like Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and their fellows—are fighting against freedom, democracy, and world peace. It comes to the conclusion that these dictators are a cancer on the world and must be destroyed in order for democracy, and all things good, to flourish.

Theory Two-

My theory is more complicated and is based on the entire flow of human history.It posits that the world is undergoing a massive revolutionary transformation of its economic, political, and social institutions. This revolution was set off by the adoption of markets as the primary mechanism for the distribution of food.Dictators are part of the revolution. War is part of the revolution.

Chaos and anarchy are part of the revolution. All of these things are temporary. They will not last forever. The end result of this revolution is democratic market society.If the democratic nations of the world are going to go out and remove dictators from office, they should at least know why dictators exist and why they are connected with violence. Here are two very different explanations. Only one of them can be correct. Which one is it? You decide.In accordance to my barely - literate friends, the graphic below will show you what I mean by a world historical, revolutionary transition through oligarchical societies to market systems - Enjoy

!

If this freezes, tryhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/rwagner337/3338901102/ and click on "All Sizes" to read it.

"But what about the poor...?"

Believing that poverty is a live political issue is a form of self-delusion by elite liberals for which conservatives should be very grateful — it leads liberals into vast wastes of effort. But it isn’t just liberals who get taken in. A conservative friend who was in on the email discussion said to me, in effect, “But what about the homeless?”. His argument was that homeless people are America’s ‘real’ poor, and he has a point. The trouble with taking that argument any further is that there are too few homeless people to have any effect on politics other than as an emotive issue that wealthy white activists can flog to make themselves feel more virtuous.

In 2003, the Census Bureau reported that 35.9 million persons “lived in poverty”.

What the report showed, in part:

– Forty-six percent of all poor households own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and porch or patio.

– Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning.

– Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

– The average poor American has more living space than the average (i.e. not poor) individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other European cities.

– Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two or more cars.

– Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television. Over half own two or more color televisions.

– Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

– Seventy-three percent own a microwave oven, more than half have a stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.

“Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family isn’t hungry, and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family’s essential needs. While this individual’s life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, activists and politicians.”

I remind you all - this was in 2003, actually reflecting a 2002 framework.

Thoughts?

Fatal Purity and the Health Care debate.

With its striking images of an oppressed and riotous people razing a prison to the ground and of swift justice doled out to both the rich and poor by the cold, unsympathetic edge of a guillotine blade, the French Revolution is a period oft-romanticized by historians and story-tellers alike (even I couldn’t help myself just now).

The eternal notion of truth, conformity of thought with reality, impels us to say: This displeases me and annoys me, but it is none the less true. Still, human interests are so strong that Pontius Pilate's question often reappears: "What is truth?" One answer which we must examine is that of pragmatism.

Nancy Pelosi has informed her peers (slaves?) that they MUST vote for the health care bill, even at the risk of their political careers because "we need courage" to pass something comprehensive, not incremental. This is the very definition of "Fatal Purity" - to be so committed to a policy, belief or philosophical framework, as to reject even the very notion of anything else to do with same.

I hate to shift Nancy's paradigm, but even Abraham Lincoln had to conclude, during the Civil War (The War Of Northern Aggression as it is properly known in the South) that the Constitution itself is "not a suicide pact" - in other words principles are fine, but one is not required to drag others to your impending self-immolation scene.

In Pelosi's case, the Holy Grail of universal health care taking over a substantial percentage of the American (and God knows who else's - read the thing!) economy, thus control of the Great Unwashed, has imputed a serious condition… Look into the eye of a a serial killer, religious fanatic or a chicken and you will see it - her self-induced, quasi-religious ecstasy is bordering on public orgasm!

Well, be it so… but I would keep one thing in mind if I were her - that the bloody excesses, due to fatal purity, of The French Revolution did not lead to "Liberté, égalité, fraternité, French for "Liberty, equality, fraternity (brotherhood, for those living in Perryville, KY) for all.

It led to Napoleon Bonaparte.

A "Safe European Home"?

Riots in Spain & Greece, mass protests all over the rest of Europe - what's really going on here? Blaming this on the latest global financial meltdown is too easy, more a symptom than really a root problem. Why? Because the people of Europe have been promised a "safe European home" by their political leaders, and the leaders, from Lenin & Lloyd George to Merkel & Papandreou, for the last 90+ years - and they have failed to deliver. Therefore, hey... the people are pissed off.

In the grisly aftermath of World War I, European politicians were eager to guarantee, as best they could, a world safe from the death & destruction of war. However, the result of the Treaty Of Versailles only guaranteed a resentful Germany.

The Treaty of Versailles was neither lenient enough to appease Germany, nor harsh enough to prevent it from becoming the dominant continental power again. The treaty placed the blame, or "war guilt" on Germany and Austria-Hungary, and punished them for their "responsibility" rather than working out an agreement that would assure peace in the long-term future. The treaty resulted in harsh monetary reparations, millions of Germans turned into minorities in neighboring countries, territorial dismemberment, mass ethnic resettlements and indirectly hampered the German economy by causing rapid hyperinflation - see inflation in the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic printed trillions to help pay off its debts and borrowed heavily from the United States (only to default later) to pay war reparations to Britain and France, who still carried war debt from World War I.

The treaty created bitter resentment towards the victors of World War I, who had promised the people of Germany that U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points would be a guideline for peace; many Germans felt that the German government had agreed to an armistice based on this understanding, while others felt that the German Revolution had been orchestrated by the "November criminals" who later assumed office in the new Weimar Republic. Wilson was not able to get the Allies to agree to adopt them, nor could he persuade the U.S. Congress to join the League of Nations. The result was A Germany ripe for Adolf Hitler to exploit. The recounting of Hitlers crimes during the war need not be done here, as it is an expansive & well understood topic of it's own.

The destruction of Europe and the destruction of a significant portion of the United Kingdom's cities (via aerial bombing) would also ruin the reputation of the imperial nations in the eyes of their colonies. Coupled with the enormous expense incurred in the war, an empire was perceived to be an unnecessarily expensive possession. This would enable the rapid decolonization process that would see the empires of the United Kingdom and others swept away.

The European Union grew out of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which was founded in 1951 by the six founding members: Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (the Benelux countries) and West Germany, France and Italy. Its purpose was to pool the steel and coal resources of the member states, and to support the economies of the participating countries. As a side effect, the ECSC helped defuse tensions between countries which had recently been enemies in the war. In time this economic merger grew, adding members and broadening in scope, to become the European Economic Community, and later the European Union.

But here is the "crux of the biscuit" - the politicians of Europe, from the UK to France, Germany & Greece promised, and fully intended to provide a "safe European home" to the people of The Continent.  We are seeing the result of that today - the ever expanding social services, submission to the trade unions, and unsustainable birth rates (Germany & Italy's birth rate is below replacement level - guarantees a lower tax base) have led to the crisis we see today in Greece, Spain, France and all across Europe. Protestors don't want their subsidies cut, they want their money, so they protest the austerity measures necessary for these nations to survive.

They want their "safe European home". But there is no money. So what to do?

Years of unrestrained spending, cheap lending and failure to implement financial reforms left all European Nations badly exposed when the global economic downturn struck. This whisked away a curtain of partly fiddled statistics to reveal debt levels and deficits that exceeded limits set by the eurozone, particularly in Greece. If Europe needs to resort to rescue packages involving bodies such as the International Monetary Fund, this would further damage the euro's reputation and could lead to a substantial fall against other key currencies.

Has Europe learnt nothing from the 1920s when Germany was, in many ways, in a similar situation to Greece today? Prevented from raising exports to service its foreign debt (reparations) by mercantilist policies, Germany embarked on a disastrous course of deflation and depression which paved the way for the horrors that followed. Today as then, deficit countries cannot simply save their way out of crisis, they must have the opportunity to grow their way out. And this is also the only way to limit the damage to surplus countries, who are otherwise also destined to lose out in terms of growth, employment and financial stability. Greece, indeed all Europe, all the globe has just got to feel the pain for a while. Riots will ensue in Europe maybe even here in the US, but I think a cultural reassessment and adjustment will follow. Or not.

Remember, in fluid unstable economic times, wars often start - the promise of a "safe European home" once again rings hollow.

Capital Punishment - a freak Gonzo perspective.

 Thinking about the death penalty (capital punishment to you wonks out there). We could easily pass these reasons off as barbaric and unnecessary…if they didn’t actually work. The crime rate gap between Singapore and the United States, for example, is rather vast; in fact Singapore has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. In a country where smuggling over 50 grams of heroin is certain to result in the same punishment as slaughtering another human being, obviously, a criminal has to decide if breaking the law at all is really worth their life. 

1. Justice

2. Retribution

3. Deterrent to Crime

4. Religious Doctrine

5. Removal of a Threat to Society

6. The Fairness of the Death Row Process

7. Necessity - Under the law of most militaries throughout history, the crimes of murder, mutiny, treason, and desertion during a war time warrant a mandatory, (and even on the spot) death sentence. However, during a time of war, where survival of an army and even the civilization that army is represents is at stake, death may be the only reasonable punitive tactic to employ. Under full abolition of the death penalty, some of the criminals who would see lives lost through their lawlessness or cowardice would have to waste the time of those fighting the war through the lengthy judicial process, and in war, time and manpower makes all the difference.

8. Cost - awful, but it IS a consideration. Incarceration costs can reach into the hundreds of thousands, PER prisoner.

9. Life Imprisonment Changes - you can be pardoned, reduction via appeal or government intervention.

10. More Humane than other Forms of Punishment - Compared to “incapacitation”, which is a kinder phrase for lobotomy, or sentencing a criminal to solitary confinement for the next 25-50 years, executing a criminal may seem like a more humane option. A criminal sentenced to life without parole will never again see daylight, and will have to consider the consequences of their crime until the day they die.

But the real reason, IMHO, has nothing to do with these. The real reason has to do with the rights of the STATE (meaning, the nation-state framework). It has to do with the “slippery slope” argument. It is cold, but rational and logical.

Consider this - if you remove the State’s right (in the US, the People are the State, as the recent election demonstrates) to take life (under very strict guidelines - due process for example), what is next? The States right to - levy taxes? What are the consequences to that? How about provide for the common defense? Anti-war folks LOVE that one. Want to remove that? How about the right of the State to --- do anything? How about eliminating the State period? Anarchists and those who truly understand Marx would love that one. After all, Marxs’ final compelling point in “Das Kapital” was the withering away of the State - not a super-powered, uber-nation.

Once the right of the State to legitimately murder (because, after all, that’s what I’m talking about) it’s citizens, albeit under strictly defined, strictly controlled circumstances, is taken away, you have established a dangerous precedent.

The precedent that the State has no absolute rights at ALL.

Just another bizarre rambling of a fully blown mind - what say you?

Quo Vadis, Herr Marx?

Marx and Dickens - random free form funk... yeah, it's all over da place.

I often rant about the people who are stuck worshiping the 19th Century Dutch recluse who lived in London. I tend to call them damnMarxists, one word. But the reality is that most Lefties are more accurately referred to as damn Dickens-Marxists.

Why? Because they are trapped in the observations of two men living in Britain, who were one year apart in age: Karl Marx and Charles Dickens. Karl Marx and Charles Dickens both observed a world that had only fifty years of rudimentary experience with industrial commerce.  They were observers in the earliest years of industrial commerce.

When both men came of age in the 1830's there were no elevators to make skyscrapers, canals were just being built for transport, horse and wagon were the main mode of transport, bicycles hadn't been invented.  Trains were virtually unknown as were any form of telegraph. England, particularly London, had no sewer system no bathing, no toilets and dentistry was done by barbers. Ships had sails, but only a few masts, since square riggers were yet to come, muskets were common as were swords and dueling. Department stores, fixed pricing, cash registers and the notion of doctors with clean hands were only to come in the last part of either man's life; after most of their writing had been done.

Dickens described the lot of most people, not just poor, but most people in the foul smelling, illness bound London.  It was miserable and Dickens saw the cause as industrial commerce. Karl Marx saw the same thing, with the additional cause in the rudiments of global trade. England and much of Europe were buying global supplies with the protection of armies and navies to maintain modest stability with local communities mostly in rebellion.

That is the world most lefties still see today.  They see Dickens poverty all around them, they see Marx's elitist class analysis and labor theory of value based on mid-19th Century industrial commerce.  Marx's and Dickens world had only the rudiments of technology, rudiments of international trade, no agricultural surpluses and no significant banking or capital markets...certainly no government regulation of contracts, labor law, health codes or anything else.

A Lefty view of the world is pretty much the way an angry 2 year old sees the world.

Charles Dickens and Karl Marx?

A Christmas Carol, though? Did you know that Dickens and Marx were writing at the same time in the same city about the same thing, about the consequences of capitalism without a conscience? We know Dickens' vision through the narrative universe he created in stories like Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Hard Times, Great Expectations-and perhaps most dearly of all, A Christmas Carol.  I wonder if you have you ever thought of what A Christmas Carol is really all about? Or have you ever thought of it in relationship to Das Kapital, Marx's magnum opus?

Both Dickens and Marx observed the aches and pains, the groaning and suffering of an industrializing Europe-of the dissonance between the Scrooges and the Tiny Tims’ of this world. Both could see that capitalism without a conscience was a cultural dead-end that would lead the masses into alienation from each other and the world around. The one did so as an artist, with his finger-to-the-wind, sensing and feeling the direction of his moment, mid-19th century England; the other did so as a political philosopher, with his brilliant mind at work on the social and economic reasons for the cracks in the capitalist dream that led to such alienation.

To say it very plainly: over the next century-and-a-half, scores of millions lost their lives over the misreading of the human condition and history at the heart of Marx's critique, and the world as we know it has been radically and tragically affected by his misunderstanding the nature of vocation and therefore occupation, of what life is about and therefore what our lives are about. In the early 21st-century, there is almost global acknowledgement of this truth.

But when I was 20 I thought that Marx was very close to the truth. He had a passionate commitment to a just world; at least it seemed so to me in my young idealism. He had a comprehensive critique of the world, and of our place in it, and I desperately wanted that too. But as tempted as I was by him, eventually I was drawn even more so into a vision of the kingdom of God. When push-came-to-intellectual-shove, the vision of Jesus for the way life ought to be answered my questions and addressed my hopes more fully than did Marx's.

Like most folks, I wanted a way to see the world that made honest sense of the world. I yearned for the world to be the way it ought to be, and I knew that I needed a worldview that could make sense of what I saw and heard all around me, that could help me understand the hopes and heartaches of human beings that were increasingly part of my place in a pluralizing, globalizing world. In the end, Marx, and Mao were inadequate for that. In the end, their visions were lies of the most fundamental sort, offering a fiction about who we are and how we are to live.

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When Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto, he made a mistake. Instead of using a realist philosophy such as Thomism to ground his theory, Marx used Idealist Materialism. Following Hegel’s Idealist notion of the Dialectic of Absolute Spirit in History, Marx argued that History is based upon Idealist Dialectical Materialism. The problem with this of course is that Marx rejected Plato, the only idealist philosophy that ever works. 

Instead Marx butchered idealism by juxtaposing it with materialism. Since the ideal cannot be real except in Platonism where the Immutable Platonic forms are Substantial, Marx was stuck with the idea that materialism is ideal. Everyone knows of course that the material universe is real not ideal. Thus a material tree is not a “Reified Concept” but instead is “concrete” or real. 

Additionally, since Marx rejected the existence of God in his political philosophy, idealist materialism soon came to be atheistic materialism. Atheistic materialism then supports the absurd philosophy of the science of Logical Positivism which was totally destroyed by Kant and Husserl. Communism will never work because its’ underlying reality premises are wrongheaded.

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Marx, like his contemporary, Charles Dickens (?!?!?!?!?),formulated the idea of traditional communism at the peak of the industrial revolution. During which time things like labor unions, minimum wages, etc... had yet to come into existence. So theoretically the only way to provide justice for the proletarians was to overthrow the industrialists and form a new form of government-- communism. Keep in mind that Marx's intended communism to be used in advanced industrial nations, but the only countries that made use of communism were countries that were still stuck in the Middle Ages. Communism simply doesn't work the way Marx intended it because we live in a shitty world where the motto of "survival of the fittest" is engrained into the minds of everyone no matter where you live. Therefore the people who ultimately form the governments to these so-called communist countries, which would probably have Marx turning in his grave, realize the power they ultimately have and maybe will initially use it for the "good" of the nation but will ultimately use it for their own means.

Too often people confuse communism with socialism. Russia and other so-called communist regimes were Socialistic dictatorships. Cuba isn't communist...its controlled by a dictator. If you truly read Das Kapital, the difference would be crystal clear. Socialism is when the "government" controls the output of their national product. Actually, look at the USA GNP and you'll see over 35% of our economy is Socialistic...in that the government spends 35% on "social" programs. Socialism...Social security... pretty close. Communism in it's purest form is actually a simple thing. It's basic manner, according to the Founder of Communistic theory (Karl Marx) is this ...."From those who can....to those who need". This is found in close knit church groups and was prevalent in American Indian Society. The only reason communism does not work is BECAUSE of government interference's...such as Cuba, Chile, and USSR. There has never been a pure Communistic nation,,,only successful Socialist governments such as Sweden. Even Canada is successfully moving towards socialism with their socialized medicine, free education to its citizens, etc.

Communism seems to be most efficacious in smaller groups, say, tribes or cults less than a few hundred. without the individual contact, people begin to feel like they might be contributing more than their neighbor. so, they slow down. One of the biggest problems with Communism is that it inherently lacks a motivational mechanism. without drive, people just waste away. It seems to work in practice and in theory, on a small scale, because the effect of the "lazy" people is minimized. On large scale, though, the hard working people start out by counterbalancing the not-so-hard working people and as time goes on, they start working less. And the people before who were average workers work less, so the curve shifts and eventually you have a population where the majority of the people don't work very hard. People are very short sighted by nature, at least in Western Civilizations.

Working hard in the present sucks for the present, but benefits in the future. Working average in the present isn't so bad in the present, and is sort of mediocre in the future. Working below average in the present is awesome in the present, but catastrophic in the future.

As a PERSONAL philosophical framework, I think that it's fine, even a bit noble to be a "small case c",  Communist. Get a group of like-minded folks together, form a commune, and go for it. The Oneida Community (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida_Community) lasted almost 38 years, until it declined due to succession woes ( see article).

Ultimately, You can debate all you want about Communism, Socialism, and Capitalism, but in the end, most everyone uses bits of all three. We are certainly a capitalist system, but we have socialist elements (Medicare, Social Security) and even institutions based on communistic structures (the prison system, the public school system, the military). The question, then, isn't why communism doesn't work as an economic system, but for what reasons the major communist regimes that we have known have failed.

The chief factor is that too much decision-making rests in too few hands, and economic forces are curbed not by market demand (the natural force of capitalism) but by arbitrary policy. Price setting and fixing, and production levels of key commodities, are set by government, and they must work a very vast and complex machine (a national economy) and all its moving parts (supply chains, raw materials, labor pools, meteorological forces and surprises, political upheaval, etc.) manually.

The result can be devastating. During his Great Leap Forward, Chinese Communist chairman Mao Zedong tried to change his system in mid-stream to respond to market forces. He curtailed food growth by a huge cross-section of the Chinese agricultural economy and had them smelt pig iron in their yards in small forges. Not only was this method flawed, producing shoddy iron, but the next years after his program found China with not nearly enough to eat...and almost 78 million starved to death. This makes Mao the greatest mass murderer in history - Adolf got nuttin’' on hiz ass.

These kinds of problems occur when small groups try to arbitrarily manage market forces. Competition and free-market pricing tend to work much better, though no system is flawless or foolproof (as our current economic situation proves).

Musings on the Day Of Infamy…

This note is going to get me in some trouble with some of you. Some of you will cry “America Hater”; some will say “he’s retarded” (probably closer to the truth) and most of you will say… “meh”. That’s OK. Those of you that know me, know I am not an America hater, or a person that is gratuitously anti-war. But something is not quite right in this country, and it's not Obamas fault or Bushs' fault, etc, etc, etc. It is a grievous wound & it is deep.

My Uncle Marsh was there that morning, at the base depot, getting some spares for the gun turret he & his team were repairing. He was a civilian shipyard worker at the time - that wouldn’t last long. Eventually, three more of my uncles would join Marsh & my Dad in the Pacific War.

Pearl Harbor has been frameworked as a sneak attack by massive naval air forces by Imperial Japan. The term “sneak attack” is not a precise one. We knew the Imperial Japanese Fleet was underway when they left Yokosuka, earlier in November. And while conspiracy folks will claim Roosevelt knew the where & when, this is not accurate either. Target lists included the Guam, The Philippines & Wake Island. All were attacked in the 3 day period between December 7th and 10th. Excuse for entry into the war, to help Churchill? Consider for a moment, that Adolf Hitler did NOT declare war on the USA on December 10th. What excuse then? No European Theater for us! What if, in a fit of pique (over Japans refusal to help Germany, by invading Siberia), Hitler declared war on JAPAN instead, announcing he would ally Germany with the US against them? Neutralizing ANY effort to help Great Britain. Good Lord! 

And while it’s always interesting to explore these scenarios, they are not the subject of this rant. The Pearl Harbor attacks’ effect on our psyche, our way of thinking since, indeed, our way of like as Americans, is.

The response to Pearl Harbor, even now, reflects a general viewpoint in harmony with the belief that we were dealing an isolated occurrence, unrelated to Asian history or world affairs, and is to be considered, even now, as a subjective event to be seen through the eyes of a politically naive sailor, several decks down on an exploding ship, or a housewife standing on a rooftop five miles from the embattled Base, describing the smoke and the noise of the explosions. And editorial writers still produce copy which reads like more indignant screeds contemporaneous with the event. For most journalists, it is simply another occasion to tie the past into contemporary opportunism and to use it to buttress current policy, in one way or another. The fact is, Pearl Harbor was anything but an isolated incident, and it’s effects linger still in the psyche of American foreign policy. Lets look at some facts, through the lens of present-day policy.

The United States has 6,702 installations, some large, most small (less that 50 personnel) around the globe. 96 large bases are in U.S. territories around the globe, and 702 of them are in some 130 plus foreign countries. But as Chalmers Johnson has documented, the figure of 702 foreign military installations is too low, for it does not include installations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan. Johnson estimates that an honest count would be closer to 1,000.

The number of countries that the United States has a presence in is staggering. According the U.S. Department of State's list of "Independent States in the World," there are 192 countries in the world, all of which, except Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, have diplomatic relations with the United States. All of these countries except one (Vatican City) are members of the United Nations. According to the Department of Defense publication, "Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country," the United States has troops in 135 countries.

The question is why, and the answer is never approached. I did several Google searches today on “present-day effects of Pearl Harbor” & the like. Not a single hit advanced anything outside of the “indignant screed” I previously referenced, or a stereotypical “hater” commentary about the USA being a terrorist state, provoking the Japanese, blah, blah, blah. Every single sane entry was focused on the all-to-famialr recitation we are familiar with - the "sleeping giant" reference, Admiral Yamamotos' admonishment that he could "run wild" in the Pacific for only 6 months. the event as a mobilizing factor for US citizens... we know all this already. None of these views informs the evolution of American foreign policy, Intelligence and military frameworks due to the Pearl Harbor attack, in my opinion.

Before World War Two (the so-called “inter-war” period), the USA was a sleepy country, still in the throes of the Great Depression. Military reserve readiness was minimal, with just over 127,000 active duty Army troops, and just under 180,000 for the Navy & Marine Corps. Pre-war mobilization in 1940 called for ramping up to 1.2 million troops via National Guard mobilization. The Senate did not ratify the League Of Nations Treaty (pre-war version of the UN), and the American People were distinctly Isolationist (led by none other than Charles Lindberg) in their attitude toward foreign policy. Pearl Harbor changed all that, and permanently.

During the war, in order to ensure victory, Generals Marshall & Arnold led the effort to totally integrate industrial production & innovation into military operational objectives-- the so-called "military/industrial complex" the US had been evolving since the Civil War (and that President Eisenhower warned us of) was now a matter of fact...

Demobilization after the war was swift and led to a grievous shortfall of men & materiel when The Korean War began in 1950. This would not do, so during and after that conflict, things would change. Funding for the military did not demobilize much of anything, bases were constructed from Antarctica to Greenland, and CIA was tasked with more covert missions, with the money to carry these out. From Guatemala to Iran, CIA was on the move worldwide to shape the world as our foreign policy saw fit. In 1952, the National Security Agency was founded, and the “Puzzle Palace” began an epic sweep of electronic signal intelligence & analysis everywhere. And so the “Pearl Harbor-iztion” of national military/State department policies began.

Our continuous military buildup since World War II and the 702 plus military bases we currently maintain in other people's countries is the result. Yet as 9/11 so heinously points out, such expansion, amounting to military Keynesianism, has not brought us all that much increased security. The question has to be asked - is this buying us anything? 

Honestly, I just don’t know. I can see the point that a lot of this infrastructure is wasted time, effort & money. But on the other hand, we DO have enemies that should not be ignored. Then again, this expansion may explain why we are hated around the world. The concept of "blowback" does not just mean retaliation for things our government has done to and in foreign countries, something I have direct personal experience with. It refers to retaliation for the numerous covert operations we have carried out abroad, that were kept totally secret from the American public. This means that when the retaliation is visited upon us -- as it did so spectacularly on September 11, 2001 -- the American public is unable to put the events in context. So they tend to support acts intended to lash out against the perpetrators, thereby most commonly preparing the ground for yet another cycle of blowback.

I'm often asked why we have 530,000+ troops in over 53 countries worldwide... why NSA & CIA scarf up every electronic signal in existence, why Americans appear so paranoid, and why all this effort fails from time to time. Pearl Harbor seared & embedded the fear of sneak attack into the psyche of this nation, affecting us right down to the present. 

I make no judgement for good or ill, but some peeling back has to be done, for we just can’t afford this either in national morale, statecraft or monetary terms.