Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Joe Herring writes in the American Thinker:
I recall a conversation I had with a young coworker in the latter weeks of Obama’s campaign for president. Joe the plumber had just exposed the redistributionist bent of the candidate, and I expressed my assessment of Mr. Obama as a not-so-closeted socialist. My coworker then quite earnestly asked, “What’s so wrong with socialism?”
I initially assumed he must be joking, although his face gave no indication. I stared at him dumbfounded, only later realizing I must have looked like a palsied old man — my mouth working wordlessly, the incomprehension as evident on my face as the sincerity on his. It eventually dawned on me that he really didn’t know what was wrong with socialism. I began reciting the litany of horrors: the crimes of the Holocaust, the purges of the Soviets, the thuggery and inhuman brutality of the statist regimes of the last century. The Nazis, for crissake! How could he not know about the evil of the Nazis? He listened to all of this, nodding his understanding as he recognized some of the events I described, but I could still see a question behind his eyes. While he had been taught of the existence of these atrocities, he had not been clued into the one commonality they shared. They were all perpetrated by the adherents of various forms of socialism. Indeed, such crimes were the only outcome possible.
At this point, some of us get distracted about how & whether it is possible to practice plumbing in certain counties in Ohio without a license. Among those of us who have and use the ability to remain tuned in to the central question. some of us are left asking “How are such crimes the only outcome possible?” And they would do well to become acquainted with F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, which does a great job of describing the rise of Adolph Hitler without explicitly describing Adolph Hitler.
It’s human nature. Once the factions start gutter-sniping each other, “The People” lose their desire for a wise leader and begin to nurture an unhealthy lust for a strong one. An emulsifying agent. A greeeeaaaaaaatt speechifier. One who cannot be opposed, even as he moves to codify his stupidest and most counterproductive ideas into law, without his critics paying a heady price for so criticizing. Sound familiar?
And then, as Herring explains with a clear, concise and poignant summary of Von Hayek’s tome, it gets worse:
With an economy of words that showcased the significance of his conclusion, [Von Hayek] pointed out the Achilles heel of collectivist dogma: for a planned economy to succeed, there must be central planners, who by necessity will insist on universal commitment to their plan.
How do you attain total commitment to a goal from a free people? Well, you don’t. Some percentage will always disagree, even if only for the sake of being contrary or out of a desire to be left alone. When considering a program as comprehensive as a government-planned economy, there are undoubtedly countless points of contention, such as how we will choose the planners, how we will order our priorities when assigning them importance within the plan, how we will allocate resources when competing interests have legitimate claims, who will make these decisions, and perhaps more pertinent to our discussion, how those decisions will be enforced. A rift forming on even one of these issues is enough to bring the gears of this progressive endeavor grinding to a halt. This fatal flaw in the collectivist design cannot be reengineered. It is an error so critical that the entire ideology must be scrapped.
Von Hayek accurately foretold the fate that would befall dissenters from the plan. They simply could not be allowed to get in the way. Opposition would soon be treated as subversion, with debate shriveling to non-existence under the glare of the state. Those who refused compliance would first be marginalized, then dehumanized, and finally (failing re-education) eliminated. Collectivism and individualism cannot long share the same bed. They are political oil and water, and neither can compromise its position without eventually succumbing to the other.
Ah, but talking in wistful, admiring tones about the wonderfulness of He Who Argues With The Dictionaries makes you seem so hip!
Hat tip to Washington Rebel.
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I am heading over to my blog right now to bookmark that post.
And then perhaps to Amazon to order that book.
Dang. I have way too much reading piling up.
- philmon | 11/14/2009 @ 22:24“What’s so wrong with socialism?”
Pretty much everything from beginning to end. From its implicit assumptions, to its fundamental design, to its implementation, to its results.
Why do you ask?
- cylarz | 11/15/2009 @ 02:37Unfortunately the argument over socialism is largely, if not completely, academic to most Americans. If your average Joe (plumber or otherwise) actually had to live in a socialist country for a couple o’ few years… and I mean LIVE, work, commute, raise a family, try and buy a house, pay taxes, run a business, yadda, yadda, and NOT visit for a couple weeks/months… then the answers would become painfully if not immediately obvious. We Americans simply do not realize how good we have it. Until we lose it, that is. And we’re obviously in the process of losing it.
It was most interesting to live in Britain while Dame Maggie was disassembling what the Labour Party built in the UK over the years before she came into power. She dragged the UK kicking and screaming back to its roots and yet “New Labour” subsequently managed to undo in large part (but by no means all) what she accomplished. The UK’s pendulum is about to swing back to the right with the coming elections… and we can only hope the same will occur here, with less permanent damage to our system.
I’m done now. 😉
- bpenni | 11/15/2009 @ 10:44Part of the reason this fascinates me so perpetually is that when you boil the arguments down to their essentials, conservatives and liberals are both saying the same thing: We have to show an adequate threshold of respect to something and we’re currently failing to show it — unless we mend our ways, prepare to reap the whirlwind.
With liberals, of course, that thing is Gaea.
With conservatives it is human nature, with all its wonderful potential and hideous flaws; the implied social contract by which we co-exist with each other, and with God.
- mkfreeberg | 11/15/2009 @ 11:01Hey, thanks, Morgan!
- Irish Cicero | 06/15/2010 @ 20:32