The professional left in America and their chattering-class useful idiots have followed a consistent pattern for a century: sympathizing with tyranny in their musings over how to implement policies fueled by jealousy and an undying fear of economic liberty. (Ross Kaminsky – Stern Idiocy)
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| Never met a dictator he did not like |
Add Andy Stern, former SEIU Kommisar, to the list of Communist China admirers
Inside of every good progressive is a very illiberal goose-stepper longing for the strongman. Planning committees and central control send a thrill up the legs of those who disdain the individual liberties enshrined in our moribund constitution. Bold action! Intervention!
Stern waxed poetic about China’s bold central planning:
China's 12th five-year plan. The aims: a 7% annual economic growth rate; a $640 billion investment in renewable energy; construction of six million homes; and expanding next-generation IT, clean-energy vehicles, biotechnology, high-end manufacturing and environmental protection—all while promoting social equity and rural development. (Andy Stern – I Love Communism)That’s nothing. Tom Friedman’s ardor swells and his breast heaves as he gushes forth his paeans to the burly, bossy, ever so muscular Chinese Communist Politburo. If only the power elites here in America could snatch such willy-nilly decision-making from the ignorant clutches of workaday rubes! Why can’t we do away with all this messy democracy and have a dictator state like China, ask the ChiCom fanboys.
Jonah Goldberg knows how to puncture the balloon:
China had five-year plans before it started getting rich. Under the old five-year plans, China killed tens of millions of its own people and remained mired in poverty.Here’s the reality that the progressive toadies don’t want to face…
Oh, and what about labor? There’s one labor union in China, and it’s run by the government. (The Nazis had pretty much the same system.) Stern doesn’t seem to care.
Obviously, the core problem with China envy is not economic but moral. To the extent that China’s economic planning “works,” it does so because China is an authoritarian country. (Japan has been planning its economy within democratic restraints and has been dying on the economic vine for nearly 20 years.) You can hit your building quota a lot more easily when you can shoot inconvenient people and trample property rights at will. The Three Gorges Dam displaced more than a million people who were given three choices: move, jail, death. (Goldberg – China Envy)
Now comes the hangover. The public works projects are winding down, unleashing a wave of unemployment and an uptick in social unrest. The banks' nonperforming loans are rising, and local governments are insolvent. The country is littered with luxurious county government offices, ghost cities of empty apartment blocks, unsafe high-speed rail lines and crumbling highways to nowhere. (WSJ – China’s Hard Landing)This last statement could also describe the US just as well…
A financial sector that allocates credit based on politics rather than price signals led China into this mess. Popular pressure to dismantle crony capitalism is building, and the Communist Party would be wise to get in front of it while it can. (WSJ – China’s Hard Landing)For an entertaining and excellent and critique of Stern and Friedman’s corporatist mindset, see Matt Welch’s The Simpletons.
20 comments:
Historical details are so annoyiing aren't they? I wonder when Andy will catch on that after this great "awakening", his services will no longer be required. Nor his life.
Here’s the reality that the progressive toadies don’t want to face…
Now comes the hangover. The public works projects are winding down, unleashing a wave of unemployment and an uptick in social unrest. The banks' nonperforming loans are rising, and local governments are insolvent.
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Progressive toadies? Why is it that can't stop the insults?
Anyway, the excerpt describes any random capitalist nation.
According to my friend from mainland China (She visits there regularly), the economy there has slowed down, but not too drastically. Yet.
My "progressive toady" comment was directed specifically at Tom Friedman and Andy Stern.
The excerpt does not describe a capitalist nation, but rather a crony crapitalist nation.
Capitalism bad because those evil white rich folks like it.
Communism/Socialism/Marxism good because these ideals put those rich white folks in their place, and we all are gloriously now made equal.
So a few million folks need to die. Big deal. We're building a Socialist Utopia here, and if some dissenters need to be permanently removed, so be it.
Just remember, people scoffed at the notion that folks in Russia were mysteriously disappearing in record numbers or being sent to work camps, and that Hitler's SS were merely 'community organizers'.
Slowly but surely we'll see similar events, but no one will be able to comprehend them. They will be surreal and too fantastical.
Marxists, Fascists, Communists, Socialists, Progressives, Theocrats, Royalists, Corporatists -- whatever you want to call The Ruling Class - OR - The WOULD-BE Ruling Class -- are all the same at heart -- they want to exercise TOTAL CONTROL of whatever population they're involved with.
I call them DICTOCRATS or TYRANNISTS.
It doesn't matter what you CALL them, the RESULT of the kind of thinking they espouse is always the same -- i.e. the masses SUBJUGATED to the whims and caprices of the very few who have Money and Power.
All the "struggles" and "revolutions" have served only to EXCHANGE one form of despotism for another.
The only exception I know of was our own revolution in the late-eighteenth-century. Unfortunately the Industrial Revolution changed the structure of society so radically within a few short years that a whole new set of Power Dynamics came into play.
Inventors gave rise to Entrepreneurs and Industrialists -- super bosses -- who produced what the world was suddenly desperately eager to use and possess.
Then came the Labor Movement, which was soon co-opted by self-righteous, personally ambitious "labor leaders" and taken over by raw, unadulterated Marxian thinking, so that LABOR would become the new Big Bully on the Block.
And so it has gone since the beginning of human tribal existence.
Whether we like to admit it or not, we live by the dictates of bullies. The only things that change are their names -- and their STYLE.
Frankly, if it's inevitable that I am going to be subjected to the whims and caprices of autocrats or oligarchs, I'd much prefer to return to the days of Monarchy and Empire where at least the Ruling Aristocracy made a great show of dignity, splendor, pomp, circumstance and sponsored cultural achievements and architectural monuments of the highest quality.
Look what the Old Order produced in the way of public buildings and high culture, then compare it to the cramped, poorly constructed, hideously ugly, dreary, utilitarian buildings produced by modern Socialist Republiks.
That alone ought to persuade you to support something finer and nobler than grubby proletarian egalitarianism where everyone gets to share the misery and degradation in equal measure.
Tom Friedman, Andy Stern, Paul Krugman, our fine- feathered friend Ducky, and all the others of their ilk ought to be forced to spend a minimum of six months in a forced labor camp in a "Worker's Paradise" or an Islamic Republic they profess to admire so greatly.
It would be fascinating to read what they might have to say after experiencing such a heavy dose of reality.
Or have they been so heavily indoctrinated, so besotted by their own vain imaginings, and so hopelessly corrupt that they would gladly play the role of a latter day Walter Duranty?
My point, as always, however, is to stop considering too many specifics and devote ourselves to recognizing and combatting the Root Cause of all our woes, and that is the overmastering desire too many people have to CONQUER, SUBDUE, SUBJUGATE and ENSLAVE others.
These Grand Visionaries -- like Marx -- have all fallen prey to the foolish notion that when the New Order they recommend is imposed THEY will be on TOP.
The short-sighted Commie-Columnists, who function brilliantly as "useful idiots," never seem to realize that THEY would be among the first to be sent to the gulag or subjected to summary execution.
One thing a tyrant cannot abide is a vociferous, rudely impertinent critic who asks questions the tyrant has no wish to answer.
~ FreeThinke
Silver: Yes. It does not describe capitalism. After all, far and away the most unequal nations have been socialist.
WOW "The public works projects are winding down, unleashing a wave of unemployment and an uptick in social unrest. The banks' nonperforming loans are rising, and local governments are insolvent. The country is littered with luxurious county government offices, ghost cities of empty apartment blocks, unsafe high-speed rail lines and crumbling highways to nowhere."
Sounds familiar, doesn't it...just give us four more years and we're there.
Ducky "Progressive toadies? Why is it that can't stop the insults?"
Are you serious? Wasn't it you who put these quotes at my place?
"in that strange haze that envelops the right."
"Meanwhile, Perry, Cain, Bachmann et. al. are utter loons"
I've deleted a few and don't have time to get the many more.....
Silverfiddle, when I click on your name at my place in comments, I'm getting your profile page; normally, I get right into your blog. Just wanted to mention that in case you've got a glitch? . xx
They who would upon the obvious bear down
Seem quite unaware they play the clown.
Expressing disapproval is insidious.
By dwelling always on the false and hideous
We easily obscure the good within our grasp,
And to our breasts instead, an asp we clasp.
”;W]hatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
Philippians 4:8 - King James Version
We could never hope to receive better advice than that.
~ FreeThinke
Silver, I worked for the Chinese for many years and can say without any hesitation whatsoever - you know NOTHING about China.
China is a startlingly different place today than it was just one generation ago.
It is an illusion most Westerners see when they think of China as having "central" control over everything. In fact, China has a very complex political structure with huge variances from region to region, city to city, etc.
You have to try to imagine a nation of that many people. It's hard to wrap one's mind around it. They have over four times our population.
They are far more ethnically, culturally, socially diverse than most Westerners understand.
China is more akin to say all of Europe than us. Yes, we are diverse, but for different reasons and with different outcomes.
To bash the Chinese for investing in themselves at this time is just a sleazy conservative bait 'n switch to argue against doing any investing of our own here in America. If anything, the Chinese people want this, and more of it! This isn't the 'oppressive central state' imposing brutality on the masses to sustain their own power. This is a smart people making an investment in their future.
If only we had a few more smart people here in America.
JMJ
"in that strange haze that envelops the right."
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A statement of fact, hardly an insult.
The right seems to be enveloped in something out of a 50's "B" movie.
In Silverfiddle's case I bring it up because he is willing to generate discussion but nearly always sets he tone with some sort of epithet in his posting. I think it's unfortunate and creates hostility where there needed be so much.
Ducky: Are you accusing me of fostering a hostile blog environment? ;)
Jersey:
I have never been to China, so you being some kind of box kicker at a port working for the ChiComs has me beat, I admit it.
I base my comments not on hostile supposition, but rather big statist crony crapitalist Andy Stern:
China's 12th five-year plan. The aims: a 7% annual economic growth rate; a $640 billion investment in renewable energy; construction of six million homes; and expanding next-generation IT, clean-energy vehicles, biotechnology, high-end manufacturing and environmental protection—all while promoting social equity and rural development.
It's their country, and they can blow the place up for all I care.
My criticism is leveled at Tom Friedman, Andy Stern and other central planning simpletons who long to wad up the constitution and usher in some modern Day Il Duce who they imagine will make the electric bullet trains run on time.
Ducky, do you even know how hostile you sound with nearly every comment?
SF...re my comment about the blog, I just clicked on Kid's name at my place and his, too, suddenly shows the profile. I think it's Blogger. no biggie. just FYI
They are far more ethnically, culturally, socially diverse than most Westerners understand.
"I worked for the Chinese for many years ", yeah, and I slept in a Holiday Inn Express last night.
China demographically is 92% ethnic Han Chinese, the next nearest demographic group is the Zhuang at a little over 1.2%... the next nearest after that is a decimal fraction.
This makes China way more homogenous than the UK, Germany, France, or the United States and closer to a country like Italy. For whatever that has to do with the price of tea in China. I'm not sure what your point is, China is the world's bastion of multi-culturalism?
"China is more akin to say all of Europe than us." No, China is way more homogenous than either Europe or the US. You will be hard pressed to find a more homogenous zone of equal land area anywhre.
"In fact, China has a very complex political structure with huge variances from region to region, city to city, etc."
Yes, if you consider a one party state politically complex. I think a more apt adjective might be Byzantine.
"This isn't the 'oppressive central state' imposing brutality on the masses to sustain their own power. This is a smart people making an investment in their future."
I won't even get into the Chinese human rights record, but might observe the same comment might have been made about the Germans in 1938.
Cheers!
Silver,
"I have never been to China, so you being some kind of box kicker at a port working for the ChiComs has me beat, I admit it."
So, you've heard of me! LOL! Yes, I did good work for them, but I never even once for a moment acted against my country.
I base my comments not on hostile supposition, but rather big statist crony crapitalist Andy Stern:
"China's 12th five-year plan. The aims: a 7% annual economic growth rate; a $640 billion investment in renewable energy; construction of six million homes; and expanding next-generation IT, clean-energy vehicles, biotechnology, high-end manufacturing and environmental protection—all while promoting social equity and rural development.
It's their country, and they can blow the place up for all I care."
Blow it up? Investing in infrastructural development - growth? Really?
"My criticism is leveled at Tom Friedman, Andy Stern and other central planning simpletons..."
Bla, bla, bla. All negative, no positive. You want to go completely ideological and will not accept happy mediums for the common man.
They are saying, "We should adapt to change," and you seem to be saying, "Change doesn't happen."
I can tell you, with my fundamental understanding of physics, change happens whether you like it or not. Adapt.
JMJ
No one is against change or infrastructure investment, and no one is saying the Chinese haven't changed at all.
What we are saying is that anyone who points towards China and thinks, hey, that looks good, is an imbecile.
Centrally planned and managed economies can produce short term results, none have historically performed well or have been sustainable over the long term.
One need look no further than the former soviet block to learn that lesson. Government is an economic drag, the more government the greater the drag. Government consumes, not produces.
So riddle me this Batman, at what point of taxation do you cease being a free citizen and become a slave of the state?
Cheers!
Finntann said:
at what point of taxation do you cease being a free citizen and become a slave of the state?
I think that we're very close to that point, particularly if all the taxes we pay are added up.
One has to have quite a salary now to have much disposable income.
Yes Jersey, I go negative on those who long for central planning by a powerful central government here in this country.
Your glib ignorance of China's human rights violations at home and abroad is stunning coming from a liberal.
To most liberals the only possible Human Rights Violations come from White, Christian, Capitalist Men.
Everyone else gets a pass, because their dreadful deeds would never have been performed had it not been for the aggressive, oppressive arrogance and exploitative policies of Christendom.
The Liberal's Dream is to destroy even the concept of "Whiteness," and to discredit and disempower Christianity by turning it into a "socially conscious," "activist," "feelgood" nonentity.
~ FreeThinke
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