Government Forces | Communards |
| 877 killed, 6,454 wounded, and 183 missing | 6,667 confirmed killed and buried; unconfirmed estimates between 10,000 and 20,000 killed |
The key to minimizing casualties will be picking the right moment to end CHAZ, the Capitol Hill Atonomous Zone. Maybe it will disolve on its own. That is the best case scenario. Maybe it will descend into chaos and internal rioting and death. That is a worst case scenario. Maybe the criminal element will step in to restore ordeer, so they can get back to work. That is a more middle way.
I have a Sister-in-Law with a condo very close to CHAZ—a few blocks. She isn't living there at this time, but I would hate to see her investment go up in flames.InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
For John, BLUF: Local Blogger, but a global view. Nothing to see here; just move along.
From The Richard Howe Blog, by Ms Marjorie Arons-Barron, 2 March 2020.
While reviewing the Super Tuesday Democratic list, the author made this comment about Sentor Bernie Sanders:
In earlier blogs, I’ve made clear my reaction to self-styled democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, notable more for his angry and impassioned speechifying and fringe political views than any legislative achievement. His breathtakingly expensive proposals – including eliminating private health insurance, guaranteeing federal jobs, decriminalizing immigration violations and providing tuition-free college education without means testing – are all general election non-starters. He claims his goal is to have the US become a social welfare state akin to the Scandinavian countries, but Nordic leaders insist that their systems are not at all what Sanders describes. They complain Sander’s vision sounds like a naïve 1960s graduate school student’s bull session, embracing Cuba more than Denmark.
I think the author is on the mark. The Press has been soft on Senator Sanders, not pressing him on his real socio-economic views. I want to hear him articulate more of his view. The Senator seems unable to reject the actions of Fidel Castro of Cuba, or the recent leaders of Venezuela. For sure, someone who has looked at the history of socialism will realize that some efforts to implement it in the last century led to massive deaths.♠
Regards — Cliff
♠ MSNBC Commendator Chris Matthews was not wrong about that. It fact he wasn't wrong about the French evaluation of the Battle of France in 1940. One wonders if Democrats read history?
For John, BLUF: I have been hearing about how "this is the end" for one party or another, from my youth, but differences of opinions make political parties happen. Nothing to see here; just move along.
From TheNew York Review of Books, by Mr Michael Tomasky, 26 March 2020 Issue.
Here is the lede plus four:
In early January, as Democratic voters began to focus more intently on the approaching primary season, New York magazine published a profile of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The writer, David Freedlander, spoke with her about the divisions within the Democratic Party, and asked what sort of role she envisioned for herself in a possible Joe Biden presidency. “Oh, God,” Ocasio-Cortez replied (“with a groan,” Freedlander noted). “In any other country, Joe Biden and I would not be in the same party, but in America, we are.”
This was in some respects an impolitic, even impolite, thing for the first-term politician to say. AOC, a democratic socialist, had endorsed Bernie Sanders the previous October, so it was no secret where her loyalties lay. Still, Biden was at that point the clear front-runner for the presidential nomination, and freshman members of Congress don’t usually make disparaging remarks about their party’s front-runner. Her comment thus carried a considerable charge—a suggestion that if Biden were the nominee, this luminary and her 6.3 million Twitter followers might not just placidly go along.
And yet, she is correct. In a parliamentary system, Biden would be in the main center-left party and AOC in a smaller, left-wing party. So her comment was an accurate description of an oddity of American politics that has endured since just before the Civil War—the existence of our two, large-tent parties battling for primacy against each other, but often battling within themselves.
At the moment, as the Democrats struggle over their future, one can legitimately wonder whether the poles of the Democratic tent are strong enough to hold. The divisions are stark. This historical moment is often compared to 1972, when a youth movement similar to the one Sanders leads today took over the party and nominated George McGovern. But if anything, today’s divisions run far deeper. Then, the party was split chiefly over the Vietnam War. There were other issues, to be sure, and the New Left—the 1960s movement of student radicals that spread from Madison to Berkeley to everywhere—pressed a broader critique of American society; but McGovern’s was fundamentally an antiwar candidacy. And while the Vietnam debate was shattering to the party for a few years, wars eventually end, as indeed that one did, not long after the 1972 election.
Once it ended, and once the Watergate scandal mushroomed, the party was able to stitch itself back together with surprising ease. In the 1974 midterms, both liberals and moderates were able to run aggressively against Richard Nixon, and the Democrats made historic gains that year. Then, with the country still agitated over Nixon and Gerald Ford’s pardon of him, and with a sunny southern moderate vaulting over several better-known and more liberal senators, they recaptured the White House in 1976.
Then, this sentence to describe the current issues of division:
The current divide is not about one war. It is about capitalism—whether it can be reformed and remade to create the kind of broad prosperity the country once knew, but without the sexism and racism of the postwar period, as liberals hope; or whether corporate power is now so great that we are simply beyond that, as the younger socialists would argue, and more radical surgery is called for.
And there we have it. The United States is a nation that has prospered due to good natural resources, a working economic system and a political system that does a good job of reflecting the opinions of both the majority and minority—the political majority and minority. This is reflected in the fairly routine replacement of one party by the other in our highest office. And it is facilitated by our willingness to move on. Southerners were forgiven. No one today blames Puerto Rican’s for the Capitol being shot up post WWII. Moving on and succeeding is our mode, and the best revenge.
The threat to the American system and success is our fascination with the allure of socialism. These United States has its flaws, and they need fixing.
A question for the voters: Do we go with steps of progress or do we go with a revolution? The problem with slow steps of progress is you never actually get to that ideal State. The problem with revolution is that the minority, which thinks it is going too fast, will resist and sabotage, and the only path of resolution is suppression.
It is said that in the implementation of socialism in the last Century there were 100 million deaths. That is a lot of resistance crushed. Did it happen everywhere? No. It didn't happen in Israel or the Scandinavian nations. But, they backed off before it hit that tipping point. On the flip side you have Russia (Soviet Union), China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and a couple of African States. We don't count Italy and Germany, because Benito Mussolini had rejected Communism early on in favor of a more nationalist approach.
You may think this time will be different, but when you have the map to Utopia in your hands you are unlikely to want to listen to people with alternative ideas.
Regards — Cliff
For John, BLUF: Sometimesthe media fails to look behind the curtain when vetting certain politicians. Nothing to see here; just move along.
From The Epoch Times, by Writer Roger L. Simon, 12 February 2020.
Here is the lede plus four:
After surprising performances in Iowa and New Hampshire, Pete Buttigieg is being hyped as a possible “moderate lane” threat to a Bernie Sanders’ nomination. Indeed, the clearly politically talented Mayor Pete is, as of now, ahead in the delegate count.
But is he really a moderate? Could he actually be as radical as Sanders or (gasp!) even further left?
While many are skeptical of his limited experience as mayor of a small city, few have bored down ideologically, let alone asked that question.
This is perplexing considering Pete Buttigieg is what we used to call a “red diaper baby” (born into a communist family).
Yes, being a red diaper baby doesn’t mean you are red yourself. Many have gone in the other direction, David Horowitz being a well known example. But the old conundrum remains: how far has the apple fallen from the tree?
This is all about the Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci.
From The Washington Examiner back in April 2019:
“The father of Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg was a Marxist professor who spoke fondly of the Communist Manifesto and dedicated a significant portion of his academic career to the work of Italian Communist Party founder Antonio Gramsci, an associate of Vladimir Lenin.”
I am looking forward to the media asking Mayor Pete Buttigieg about the late Antonio Gramsci. And about the ideas of Mr Gramsci
One of those ideas was mentioned by Mr Simon, talking about Mr Gramsci's idea of revolution from the top down, through the conversion of the elites:
Gramsci called his system “the march through the institutions”—that is, the media, entertainment, the bureaucracies, the academy, and so forth
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
For John, BLUF: A fundamental question is who is Senator Bernie Sanders and what does he believe, what does he stand for? Nothing to see here; just move along.
From PJ Media, by Reporter Tyler O'Neil, 8 February 2020.
Here is the lede plus one:
After the New Hampshire Democratic debate on Friday night, MSNBC host Chris Matthews uttered high heresy against the Bernie Sanders movement by remembering the Cold War and the threat of socialist and communist executions. He warned that if Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War, "there would have been executions in Central Park, and I might have been one of the ones getting executed." As if to demonstrate the truth of this statement, Bernie Bros got #FireChrisMatthews trending on Twitter.
"The Democratic Party has to figure out its ideology," Matthews warned. [Referring to Winston Churchill] He said he was part of the Liberal Party in Britain, but that party was "overtaken by the socialist party [Labour]" and Winston "Churchill went back to the [conservative] Tories." Indeed, Churchill rejected the Liberal Party in 1924, warning that Liberals should support the Conservatives to stop Labour and ensure "the successful defeat of Socialism."
Good on Commentator Chris Matthews.
Senator Bernie Sanders wants to change America. I want to make it better, but the idea of changing it, changing the form of government or changing the economic system seems an invitation to trouble. And invitation to go the way of Venezuela.♠
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
♠ Even Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro seems to be embracing Capitalism and Venezuelan emigres are returning.
For John, BLUF: The folks in DC, and places like Portland, are looking more and more wacky. Nothing to see here; just move along.
Here is the sub-headline:
Americans might soon wish they just waited to vote their way out of the Trump era
From the Blog of Reporter Matt Taibbi, 11 October 2019.
Here is the lede plus one:
I’ve lived through a few coups. They’re insane, random, and terrifying, like watching sports, except your political future depends on the score.
The kickoff begins when a key official decides to buck the executive. From that moment, government becomes a high-speed head-counting exercise. Who’s got the power plant, the airport, the police in the capital? How many department chiefs are answering their phones? Who’s writing tonight’s newscast?
When the KGB in 1991 tried to reassume control of the crumbling Soviet Union by placing Mikhail Gorbachev under arrest and attempting to seize Moscow, logistics ruled. Boris Yeltsin’s crew drove to the Russian White House in ordinary cars, beating KGB coup plotters who were trying to reach the seat of Russian government in armored vehicles. A key moment came when one of Yeltsin’s men, Alexander Rutskoi – who two years later would himself lead a coup against Yeltsin – prevailed upon a Major in a tank unit to defy KGB orders and turn on the “criminals.”
We have long been spared this madness in America. Our head-counting ceremony was Election Day. We did it once every four years.
That’s all over, in the Trump era.
On Thursday, news broke that two businessmen said to have “peddled supposedly explosive information about corruption involving Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden” were arrested at Dulles airport on “campaign finance violations.” The two figures are alleged to be bagmen bearing “dirt” on Democrats, solicited by Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
This is sad if true, and there is a risk it is true. Does anyone really want to get up tomorrow and go downtown to fight the Brownshirts or some Communist for? Of Course not. But…
I like the sketch of former FBI Director James Comey used with the piece.
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
For John, BLUF: The electorate has gone a little wack-a-doodles in some areas. Nothing to see here; just move along.
From The American Mirror, by Reporter Victor Skinner, 12 June 2019.
Here is the lede plus one:
Candi CdeBaca won a runoff race last week against former Denver city council president Albus Brooks, and she did it by promising to implement communist policies “by any means necessary.”
CdeBaca was among three candidates that unseated incumbents in the Tuesday runoff, preliminary results show, and she’s already drawing comparisons to Socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 29-year-old who unseated 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley in New York’s 14th congressional district in 2018.
If you wanted a reason to not legalize pot, this is it. And, "by any means necessary"? That is a classic Communist approach. "Our Paradise is so great we will have to kill millions so others can enjoy it." Watch your back Denver.
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
For John, BLUF: I don't think the Progressives yet understand this. I think they still think it is just ignorance and bigotry. Sadly, they are misinformed. Nothing to see here; just move along.
Here is the sub-headline:
What’s happening in America is an echo of what’s happening in democracies around the world, and it’s not happening because of Trump.
From USA Today, by Law Professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds, 15 January 2019.
Here is the lede plus three:
To understand events around the world today, one must think in terms of the class struggle.
This sentence sounds like something that could be written by a doctrinaire Marxist. But it is nonetheless true. Much of the current tension in America and in many other democracies is in fact a product of a class struggle. It’s not the kind of class struggle that Karl Marx wrote about, with workers and peasants facing off against rapacious capitalists, but it is a case of today’s ruling class facing disaffection from its working class.
In the old Soviet Union, the Marxists assured us that once true communism was established under a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” the state would wither away and everyone would be free. In fact, however, the dictatorship of the proletariat turned into a dictatorship of the party hacks, who had no interest whatsoever in seeing their positions or power wither.
Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas called these party hacks the "New Class," noting that instead of workers and peasants against capitalists, it was now a case of workers and peasants being ruled by a managerial new class of technocrats who, while purporting to act for the benefit of the workers and peasants, somehow wound up with the lion’s share of the goodies. Workers and peasants stood in long lines for bread and shoddy household goods, while party leaders and government managers bought imported delicacies in special, secret stores. (In a famous Soviet joke, then-leader Leonid Brezhnev shows his mother his luxury apartment, his limousine, his fancy country house and his helicopter only to have her object: “But what if the communists come back?”)
I am not sure the New Class sees the problem here. Maybe the increasing number of working homeless on the Coast will help them visualize the problem.
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
For John, BLUF: The Government of China is about Citizens not getting out of line. Nothing to see here; just move along.
From Agence France-Presse, by an unnamed team of Reporters, 24 October 2018.
Here is the lede plus six:
On state television, the vocational education centre in China's far west looked like a modern school where happy students studied Mandarin, brushed up their job skills, and pursued hobbies such as sports and folk dance.
But earlier this year, one of the local government departments in charge of such facilities in Xinjiang's Hotan prefecture made several purchases that had little to do with education: 2,768 police batons, 550 electric cattle prods, 1,367 pairs of handcuffs, and 2,792 cans of pepper spray.
The shopping list was among over a thousand procurement requests made by local governments in the Xinjiang region since early 2017 related to the construction and management of a sprawling system of "vocational education and training centres".
The facilities have come under international scrutiny, with rights activists describing them as political re-education camps holding as many as one million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslim minorities.
Beijing had previously denied their existence. But a global outcry, including from the UN and the US, sparked a PR counter-offensive.
Government propaganda insisted the centres were aimed at countering the spread of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism through "free" education and job training.
However, an AFP examination of more than 1,500 publicly available government documents –- ranging from tenders and budgets to official work reports —- shows the centres are run more like jails than schools.
Rumor Control has it that China has up to a million Muslim Uyghurs in re-education camps.
China is working on development of a "Social Credit System" to rack and stack all Chinese Citizens. [From Wikipedia]
On June 14, 2014, the China's State Council issued an outline for the national social credit system, it was titled "State Council Notice concerning Issuance of the Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System (2014–2020)". Law scholar Rogier Creemers translated the document into English.
The plan shows the government wants the basic structures of the Social Credit System to be in place by 2020.[15] The goal being "raising the awareness for integrities and the level of credibility within society." It is presented as a means to perfect the “socialist market economy” (完善社会主义市场经济体制) as well as strengthening and innovating societal governance (加强和创新社会治理). This indicates that the Chinese government views it both as a means to regulate the economy at a business level and as a tool of governance to steer the behavior of citizens.
The outline focuses on four areas: "honesty in government affairs" (政务诚信), "commercial integrity" (商务诚信), "societal integrity" (社会诚信), and "judicial credibility" (司法公信). The Chinese government's plans includes credit assessment of businesses operating in China.
The Social Credit System is an example of China’s “top-level design” (顶层设计) approach. It is coordinated by the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms.
It is unclear whether the system will work as envisioned by 2020, but the Chinese government has fast-tracked the implementation of the system, resulting in the publication of numerous policy documents and plans since the main plan was issued in 2014. If the Social Credit System is implemented as envisioned, it will constitute a new way of controlling both the behavior of individuals and of businesses.
So, if your social credit score is poor you can't fly on airliners or put your kids in the good schools or gain other economic or social benefits. This is not a good thing.
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
For John, BLUF: Some on the left seem ready to jump off the precipice. Nothing to see here; just move along.
Here is the sub-headline:
It’s not just New Deal liberalism.
From Vox, by Ms Meagan Day, 1 August 2018.
Here is the lede plus one:
I’m a staff writer at the socialist magazine Jacobin and a member of DSA, and here’s the truth: In the long run, democratic socialists want to end capitalism. And we want to do that by pursuing a reform agenda today in an effort to revive a politics focused on class hierarchy and inequality in the United States. The eventual goal is to transform the world to promote everyone’s needs rather than to produce massive profits for a small handful of citizens.
Democratic socialists share goals with New Deal liberals. But they want to go further.
Jacobin Magazine? Here.
That seems to have settled that. Abolish Capitalism and replace it with socialism. Will there be an escape valve? Or is Caracas our future for ever?
Of course, if everything is produced in abundance there is no need for economics.
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
For John, BLUF: I don't think it would be a fair fight, once folks realized it was a fight. Nothing to see here; just move along.
Over at the InstaPundit, Sarah Hoyt, who was born in a nation with a Fascist Dictatorship, gives us a link to:
Here is the sub-headline:
…because they’re advocating going down a road that would have an excellent chance of leading there.
The Red Guard?
From the Neo-NeoCon Blog, 25 June 2018.
Here are the second and third paragraphs:
And for those who think I’m engaging in hyperbole, please read an essay appearing today entitled “This is just the beginning.” One of the many interesting things about that sort of call for action is that if the right was anywhere near as power-mad and oppressive as the author seems to think it is, he and his fellow-travelers would already be in prison or worse. But they’re not.
As Orwell said, “So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.”
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
For John, BLUF: One of the great things about these United States is that the individual states provide places to experiment. When I was young California experimented and it is good. Today California experiments and it is a warning to other states. Nothing to see here; just move along.
Here is the sub-headline:
Snopes, Facebook, and others purporting to ‘fact check’ conservative frustrations with California’s new water-restrictions law are the ones misleading about its effects.
From The Federalist, by Ms Inez Feltscher Stepman, 11 June 2018.
Here are the first three paragraphs:
The latest in Facebook-policed “fake news” is a claim echoing through the conservative Twittersphere, including from my own account, that two bills outgoing California Gov. Jerry Brown signed impose such draconian water use standards that fines could be imposed for taking a shower and running laundry on the same day. Snopes rated these assertions as “mostly false,” and Facebook flagged stories about them as fake news.
But Snopes, Facebook, and others purporting to “fact check” conservative frustrations with the law are the ones misleading about its effects. The way these allegedly neutral fact-checkers present repackaged liberal assumptions as hard fact is a great illustration of how the Left pulls off the kind of logical ju-jitsu that allows them to label conservative arguments as fake news in order to dismiss them.
In this particular case, none of these “debunking” articles actually dispute the three most crucial facts: there is a daily per-person 55-gallon limit ratcheting down to 50 gallons over the course of a decade, fines will be imposed upon violation, and, for at least some users, a reasonable-length shower and running the wash will put them over. In fact, most of the articles in question actually confirm these three vital points, usually squashed into a final paragraph that contradicts the headline. Nevertheless, they conclude that conservatives are spreading false information.
From there, Ms Stepman goes on to show how Snopes and Facebook suffer from innumeracy.
But, the thing I really liked about this post by Mr Ed Driscoll, at the InstaPundit, is this:
P.J. O’Rourke once wrote that “You can’t get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That’s all you need to know about communism.”
Too right.
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
For John, BLUF: Governments sometimes forget that the People are sovereign. Nothing to see here; just move along.
From The Old Gray Lady, by Columnist Maureen Dowd, 2 June 2018.
The beginning of last week's column:
It was a moment of peak Spock.
Hours after the globe-rattling election of a man whom Barack Obama has total disdain for, a toon who would take a chain saw to the former president’s legacy on policy and decency, Obama sent a message to his adviser Ben Rhodes: “There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on the earth.”
Perhaps Obama should have used a different line with a celestial theme by Shakespeare: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
As president, Obama always found us wanting. We were constantly disappointing him. He would tell us the right thing to do and then sigh and purse his lips when his instructions were not followed.
Shortly after Donald Trump was elected, Rhodes writes in his new book, “The World as It Is,” Obama asked his aides, “What if we were wrong?”
But in his next breath, the president made it clear that what he meant was: What if we were wrong in being so right? What if we were too good for these people?
“Maybe we pushed too far,” the president continued. “Maybe people just want to fall back into their tribe.”
So really, he’s not acknowledging any flaws but simply wondering if we were even more benighted than he thought. He’s saying that, sadly, we were not enlightened enough for the momentous changes wrought by the smartest people in the world — or even evolved enough for the first African-American president.
“Sometimes I wonder whether I was 10 or 20 years too early,” Obama mused to aides.
Which reminds me of East German Poet and Playwright Bertolt Brecht and his poem, after the 1953 East German uprising, The Solution
After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers' Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
For John, BLUF: Communism, in the name of equality, is evil. Nothing to see here; just move along.
From Pajama Media, by Ms Debra Heine, 3 May 2018.
The first paragraph:
An antifa group in Los Angeles celebrated May Day by holding a small march, hanging a Trump effigy, and advocating for "revolutionary violence" against the "capitalist state" in order to "create real political power."
So, the Antifa, the Anti-Fascists, in the name of Marxist-Leninist Revolution, want to make things worse for the world than the Fascists did. Remember, Fascism comes from a guy, Benito Mussolini, who rejected Communism and then moved on to found his own Party, which, when it spread to Germany and Spain, killed proportionally far fewer people that Communism. Now there is an indictment.
Don't be fooled.
Hat tip to the InstaPundit.
Regards — Cliff
For John, BLUF: Karl Marx unleashed a lot of death and destruction on the world in the 20th Century. Nothing to see here; just move along.
From CAPX, by Kristian Niemietz, 3 May 2018.
Here is the lede paragraph:
This week will mark the 200th birthday of Karl Marx. It will be an occasion for a deluge of articles repeating the well-worn cliché that even though Marx’s predictions ultimately did not materialise, his analysis of capitalism was nonetheless spot on, and remains hugely relevant today. (In fact, it’s already started.)
If you guessed The Old Gray Lady for the source of the URL for "It's already started" you are correct.
Then there is this from Mr Michael Moore:
Happy 200th Birthday Karl Marx! You believed that everyone should have a seat at the table & that the greed of the rich would eventually bring us all down. You believed that everyone deserves a slice of the pie. You knew that the super wealthy were out to grab whatever they could.
And I am sure it will, at some point. In the mean time "the greed of the rich" has only served to elevate the living standards of the rest of us, since the time of Karl Marx, and before. Think South Korea vs North Korea. Or West Germany vs East Germany. Think Venezuela.
As a side note, South Korea has a higher GDP than Russia.
Regards — Cliff
For John, BLUF: Populism isn't a political philosophy as such, but a cry of the People that the parties aren't listening. Nothing to see here; just move along.
Here is the sub-headline:
Despite all the dire Brexit forecasts, the U.K. has had a strikingly good year. Leaving the EU may well boil down to far less, economically, than anyone thought.
This is from The Wall Street Journal, 23 March 2018, by Mr Fraser Nelson (Editor of the Spectator and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph).
Here is the lede plus three:
For a country supposedly crawling out of the ruins of the Brexit vote, the U.K. has been having a strikingly good year so far. The number of people working stands at a record high, and income inequality is approaching a 30-year low, according to the Office for National Statistics. New orders for manufacturers are at their highest level in a generation, and employers in general are struggling to find enough staff to cope with demand. Even the (relatively new) national happiness index stands at a peak.
When Britain voted to leave the European Union in June 2016, a very different future was forecast. Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, declared that Britain had just “collapsed: politically, monetarily, constitutionally and economically.” But the plague of locusts has yet to show up—which is odd, given how many experts predicted that a victory for Brexit would bring catastrophe. Now, almost two years after the vote, the picture is clearer, and there is plenty of evidence to challenge the conventional wisdom, for those with eyes to see it.
To be sure, the quality of our political drama remains dismal. If you have only been looking at Westminster, you will have only seen disaster. The leaders of the Brexit campaign hadn’t given enough thought to what they’d do if they won, so they ended up destroying each other when the time came. Theresa May, who had opposed Brexit, became prime minister and then lost her majority in a snap election last summer; she carries on, but with little authority.
Brexit capsized the entire political establishment. It was a revolution, but no new regime has emerged. And that may be no bad thing: After the pyrotechnics of the past few years, a spell of boring politics is welcome. If this is a crisis, it is one with its compensations.
This was forwarded by a friend down in Key West, Florida, who commented:
From the essay: "How could so many great minds get it so wrong? It is a case study of unconscious bias in forecasts."
And, "To confuse populism with Brexit is to confuse a disease with its cure. As the Princeton political theorist Jan-Werner Müller has observed, populism is primarily a form of rhetoric, not a political agenda. It’s all about shaking a fist at the establishment, saying that your party alone can represent the silent majority. The reaction in the chancelleries of Europe has seemed to follow the Bertolt Brecht poem: “Would it not be easier… To dissolve the people/ And elect another?” But Britain offers an easier remedy: If you address what people are concerned about, populism goes away."
I like the Bertolt Brecht item.♠ It goes along with the idea of "Bitter Clingers" and "Basket of Deplorables".
Here is his Poem, "The Solution":♥
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Bertolt Brecht
Regards — Cliff
♠ Also the author of The Three Penny Opera. Remember the song "Mack the Knife"?
♥ It was written about the 1953 East German uprising.
For John, BLUF: The more the Government controls your life, the less freedom you have. Nothing to see here; just move along.
Here is the sub-headline:
Only in a free-market system can we truly achieve individual liberty and human flourishing.
From The Foundation for Economic Education, by Carmen Alexe, 9 March 2018.
Here is the lede plus three:
Individual freedom can only exist in the context of free-market capitalism. Personal freedom thrives in capitalism, declines in government-regulated economies, and vanishes in communism. Aside from better economic and legislative policies, what America needs is a more intense appreciation for individual freedom and capitalism.
I was born and raised in communist Romania during the Cold War, a country in which the government owned all the resources and means of production. The state controlled almost every aspect of our lives: our education, our job placement, the time of day we could have hot water, and what we were allowed to say.
Like the rest of the Eastern European countries, Romania was often referred to as a communist country. In school, we were taught it was a socialist country. Its name prior to the 1989 Revolution to overthrow the Ceausescu regime was the Socialist Republic of Romania.
From an economic standpoint, a petty fraction of property was still privately owned. In a communist system, all property is owned by the state. So if it wasn't a true communist economy, its heavy central planning and the application of a totalitarian control over the Romanian citizenry made this nation rightfully gain its title of a communist country.
Notwithstanding Mr Karl Marx working in the British Museum, and the existence of the British Labor Party, Communism is not compatible with the Rights of Englishmen.
Regards — Cliff
For John, BLUF: The thing is, without gun confiscation, contrary to the Fourth Amendment, gun control is a pipe dream. Unless we are going to a totalitarian state, for our own good.♠ Nothing to see here; just move along.
From The Wash Post, by Marc A. Thiessen, on 28 February 2018.
Here is the lede plus one:
A few weeks before the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar (Tex.) invited a special guest to attend the State of the Union address: Stephen Willeford, the hero who just months earlier had stopped a mass shooter at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Tex.
Stopped the shooting with an AR-15.
Just saying….
Hat tip to the InstaPundit and Blogger Author Sarah Hoyt.
Regards — Cliff
-, Mon 1.0
♠ A sort of Communist/Stalinist approach to helping the People.
