Tag: Philosophy

Why Thomas Sowell is so Popular with Conservatives

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Worth 50 minutes of your time:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdBn7MUM3Yo?rel=0]
Quote of the Day, from the end of the interview:

Peter Robinson: How’s my generation’s project of holding on to liberty coming along?

Thomas Sowell: Not well. One of the reasons I’m glad to be as old as I am is that it means I may be spared seeing what’s going to happen to this country, either internally or as the result of international complications.

Robinson: You think that America’s greatest days are gone? Full stop? That it’s irreversible?

Sowell: Nothing is irreversible. But I think that we’re like a team that is coming to bat in the bottom of the ninth, five runs behind. We can win it, but this is not… I wouldn’t bet the rent money on it.

Robinson: Last question. What would you say – talking about Milton (Friedman) talking to my generation – what would you say to the next generation, to your grandchildren’s generation about the America for which they should be preparing themselves?

Sowell: Since I don’t know what that America is going to be, I don’t want to say anything to them. By the time they get here I think the issue will have been settled one way or the other.

Robinson: By then it will be irreversible.

Sowell: Either we will have pulled out of the dive, as it were, or else it will be all over.

The Unkillable Zombie that is Communism

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Recently at Quora.com, someone asked the question:

Why does communism get such a bad reputation?

Why is America so opposed to what I merely see as a different system of running things? I used to read Karl Marx as a senior in high school and his ideas don’t seem all that “evil” to me. Am I missing something here. Why all the hate?

I responded:

I understand that the rules of Quora state that I’m not allowed to answer a question only with a graphic, but this one pretty much says it all:


Karl Marx’s failed attempt at economics and social engineering has been – directly or indirectly – responsible for the deaths of over 100,000,000 human beings – at the hands of their own governments. At the same time, capitalism has been responsible for lifting more people out of poverty than any other system ever attempted – to the point that Communist China (about half of that hundred million dead) has taken to it, albeit with strong restrictions.

If you don’t “understand the hate” I suggest you read up on the history.

Today Bill Whittle has a better answer (naturally) in his latest Firewall:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvfHLr5aEqU?rel=0]
Pullquote:

The Progressive utopia is the Loch Ness Monster of politics: a giant, air-breathing creature that never surfaces for air.

UPDATE: Eric S. Raymond expands on the subject.

This is the Definition Consequence of the Collapse of Rule of Law – UPDATED

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9BQDJZ42w0?rel=0]
Post title changed after comments.

UPDATE: The cop in question has resigned:

(Richard) Recine, a registered Democrat who serves on the elected Board of Fire Commissioners of District 2 in Piscataway, said he was being “sarcastic.”

“It was just a stupid statement on my part. He got me riled and I said it,” he explained. “I don’t believe that at all. I’m the most patriotic person in the world. I believe in God, the flag, country, the Constitution.”

Which is why he said it, while others just do it.

Read This

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Ten Reasons Why I Am No Longer a Leftist by Danusha V. Goska at American Thinker. Excerpt:

How far left was I? So far left my beloved uncle was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party in a Communist country. When I returned to his Slovak village to buy him a mass card, the priest refused to sell me one. So far left that a self-identified terrorist proposed marriage to me. So far left I was a two-time Peace Corps volunteer and I have a degree from UC Berkeley. So far left that my Teamster mother used to tell anyone who would listen that she voted for Gus Hall, Communist Party chairman, for president. I wore a button saying “Eat the Rich.” To me it wasn’t a metaphor.

Also:

My favorite bumper sticker in ultra-liberal Berkeley, California: “Think Globally; Screw up Locally.” In other words, “Love Humanity but Hate People.”

Interesting read.  Pay particular attention to reason #1.

RIP Jim Garner

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I’ve always enjoyed the film and television work of James Garner. He passed away yesterday.

Back in 2012, I posted this:

I watched an interesting interview of actor/producer James Garner from 1999 recently, and I’ve extracted three significant pieces from that interview that I wanted some feedback on.  Please watch the short (2:50) video, and give me your thoughts.  I’m really interested.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MruAzbUve9k?rel=0]

In the comments, TheGeekWithA.45 described it thus:

My initial thought was “cognitive dissonance”. Giving it a little more consideration, I’m going to go with “the triumph of indoctrination over reason”.

This is Why We Live in a Constitutional Republic

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So Hillary comes out and says:

…we cannot let a minority of people — and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people — hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.

She’s speaking about the right to arms, but it really doesn’t matter.

Why do we have a Constitution and Bill of Rights?

TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL – the smallest minority there is.

The whole of the Bill (of Rights) is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals…. It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of. — Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789.

—

The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections. – West Virginia v Barnette (1943)

We already knew that Hillary was a collectivist, but this is just the cherry on top.

Quote of the Day – Culture Edition

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Once again from Sultan Knish – Government is Magic:

Competence is the real modernity and it has very little to do with the empty trappings of design that surround it. In some ways the America of a few generations ago was a far more modern place because it was a more competent place. For all our nice toys, we look like primitive savages compared to men who could build skyscrapers and fleets within a year… and build them well.

Those aren’t things we can do anymore. Not because the knowledge and skills don’t exist, but because the culture no longer allows it. We can’t do them for the same reason that Third World countries can’t do what we do. It’s not that the knowledge is inaccessible, but that the culture gets in the way.

—

The idea that we should go by results, rather than by processes, by outcomes rather than by appearances, was revolutionary. For most of human history, we were trapped in a cargo cult mode. We did the “right things” not because they led to the right results, but because we had decided that they were the right things. There were many competent people, but they were hamstrung by rigid institutions that made it impossible to go from Point A to Point B in the shortest possible time.

And we’re right back there today.

RTWT.