But the book title may not mean what we think it does.
I heard on Glenn Beck today some clips of people being asked the question “…what is socialism?”
8 or 10 adults chosen at random (on the phone I think) could NOT answer. Most thought it had to do with socialIZING with friends / co-workers or it meant being sociABLE in groups.
One guy said, “In a word, OBAMA.”
It’s no wonder nobody sees the danger, when somebody says the current WH or Congress is full of Socialists, they think Pelosi, Reid and Obama just like to PARTY. Sad but true.
[[[One guy said, “In a word, OBAMA.”]]]
Well we know which respondent called watches Glen Beck 🙂
Well written article. His summation answers that question. Socialism is the air we breath in schools today. It isn’t hidden but you can’t see it because their is no focus on it. It just is.
This is why I repeat we’ve got a very long road back… or like a cartoon character that’s already gone over the cliff, we need to claw at the air until we get semi-safely back to the brim. Then we need to make clear progress to a sane view of things.
Having a worldview so out of touch with reality is insane. “Hey, it doesn’t work now, but keep at it and we’ll get to utopia. Here, take the Pax.”
“8 or 10 adults chosen at random (on the phone I think) could NOT answer. Most thought it had to do with socialIZING with friends / co-workers or it meant being sociABLE in groups.”
Reminds me of the reaction by many of the attendees at the Jon Stewart counter-tea-party-rally in D.C. last year, who took offense at signs accusing Obama of pushing “Keynesianism”; they said there was no proof that Obama had been born in Kenya. (Probably overlapping with those at Cancun who were worrying about DiHydrogen Monoxide.)
The thing I find disturbing is how some US voters seem to have a very short memory. Obama temporarily compromises with Republicans and there’s a significant shift in attitude. Did Obama stop spending more than a trillion dollars extra per year? Did Obama reverse Obamacare? Nope.
As I see it, Obama has done numerous things to destroy the future ability of the US to provide for itself, to employ people, and to defend itself. Yet a month of relatively good behavior is good enough for 5-10% of the population to go back to Obama (in addition to the die-hard group that was already for him).
Well, we’ll see if they stay. I get the feeling Obama did that bipartisan lead up in December just so he could have a Sputnik moment for his State of the Union address rather than talk about the real problems of the US federal government.
Karl, the most plausible explanation I’ve heard for that is that people like Obama personally. He seems so nice, manly, kind. It’s only when he gets his hands on the levers of power that he does evil things. Since the election of the most Republican House in a generation, that seems a remoter possibility, so people are free to like him again.
I said here a long time ago, it’s a pity we can’t elect Obama Head of State, like Queen Elizabeth, so that we could bask in our non-racism and have him give fine speeches at important occasions — and leave the actual governing to someone less clueless.
I had a debate with a friend of mine several weeks back that touched on a lot of things covered in this article. He is a public high school teacher with a degree in education and unsurprisingly he is a fairly far left leaning socialist. Of course, him being what is essentially a member of the clergy of the church of state he has this adamant belief that the government is inherently good and is the only entity that has the ability to fix all the things that the private sector invariably screws up. When I asked him specifically what the public sector does better than the private sector he said that the public sector doesn’t worry about making a profit and therefore is not influenced into making decisions that are purely driven by the need to make more money. He didn’t like it when I pointed out that he as an individual is in fact making a profit in the form of a wage in exchange for providing education services to kids as a larger part of what is essentially a factory that churns out (semi) educated people. The only difference is that instead of having to compete in a free market to entice people to procure education services the school’s profit is generated through compulsory taxation. The article here hit it straight on the head of the nail when it talked about how socialists think there is some “fair” wage and price for everything. Because my friends rebuttal was somewhere along of the lines of — no it’s not profit because everybody involved with the school is just being paid their fair wage and then just enough more to cover expenses to run the place and that’s it. But of course that just begs the questions of what is a fair wage? To whom? For what? But those are logical questions, for him I can tell that many of his opinions and attitudes are born more from an emotional response than from anything else.
Josh, I would say another key element of his delusion is here:
the public sector doesn’t worry about making a profit and therefore is not influenced into making decisions that are purely driven by the need to make more money.
What does it mean to “make money?” In a free country, it means producing something that people value so much they are willing to exchange hours of their labor, i.e. their money, to get it.
That is, in short, if you want to know what you can do that benefits the most people the most — ask what you can do to make money, because that pretty much guarantees you are meeting the needs of many people very well. Conversely, anything you do that doesn’t make money — that can only be supported by forcing people to fund it with tax money — is something that most people probably don’t want done, or want done some other way.
If that doesn’t cause him to re-assess the violent contradiction between his assumption that making money is in any real sense in contradiction to serving the public interest, then he will probably retreat to the fascism and aristocratic arrogance that usually underlies socialism by asserting that the problem with this theory is that people don’t know what is good for them, and so you can’t rely on their free decision of where to spend their money to tell you the public interest. — experts have to tell people what the public interest is, what’s good for us, and force us to pay for it, because we will surely not buy it of our own free will.
“then he will probably retreat to the fascism and aristocratic arrogance that usually underlies socialism by asserting that the problem with this theory is that people don’t know what is good for them”
That’s funny because when I did make a somewhat similar point this was exactly how he reacted. I can see how he carries this attitude of derision towards people in general because he works at a school that sorta serves as a dumpster for all the troublemakers that none of the other school districts want to have anything to do with. So, he deals with the less desirable on a daily basis and I think this skews his perceptions of people in general a bit. That and I think teachers in general are imbued with this false sense of superiority. What I do find odd is that he thinks his school gets a bad rep because all the magnate schools steal all the smart and talented kids away from his region and this forces all the idiots to concentrate at his. You see, if the smart kids would just serve their sentences at the school campus that was assigned to their neighborhood then the school would be much better for it. Never mind if the students actually get a better education or not it’s the status of the school that is at stake, ferchrisake.
He also touted out the old Marxists troupe that when one group of people become rich then they are doing so by taking advantage of another group which makes them become poorer somehow. I guess to him money is like geology or something. When mountains of money form over here then invariably a valley of poverty is being made elsewhere. He doesn’t realize though that because the idea of wealth is a human construct it does not necessarily have to abide by the laws of physics.
The thing I find disturbing is how some US voters seem to have a very short memory.
More than just disturbing. We may already have past the tipping point. We hit the iceberg and the band is playing. All that’s left is the freezing and the dying and whatever new ship of state comes to replace it.
If too few understand what the founders gave us it’s over. Indiscriminate immigration without the melting pot hastens the end.
But the book title may not mean what we think it does.
I heard on Glenn Beck today some clips of people being asked the question “…what is socialism?”
8 or 10 adults chosen at random (on the phone I think) could NOT answer. Most thought it had to do with socialIZING with friends / co-workers or it meant being sociABLE in groups.
One guy said, “In a word, OBAMA.”
It’s no wonder nobody sees the danger, when somebody says the current WH or Congress is full of Socialists, they think Pelosi, Reid and Obama just like to PARTY. Sad but true.
[[[One guy said, “In a word, OBAMA.”]]]
Well we know which respondent called watches Glen Beck 🙂
Well written article. His summation answers that question. Socialism is the air we breath in schools today. It isn’t hidden but you can’t see it because their is no focus on it. It just is.
This is why I repeat we’ve got a very long road back… or like a cartoon character that’s already gone over the cliff, we need to claw at the air until we get semi-safely back to the brim. Then we need to make clear progress to a sane view of things.
Having a worldview so out of touch with reality is insane. “Hey, it doesn’t work now, but keep at it and we’ll get to utopia. Here, take the Pax.”
“8 or 10 adults chosen at random (on the phone I think) could NOT answer. Most thought it had to do with socialIZING with friends / co-workers or it meant being sociABLE in groups.”
Reminds me of the reaction by many of the attendees at the Jon Stewart counter-tea-party-rally in D.C. last year, who took offense at signs accusing Obama of pushing “Keynesianism”; they said there was no proof that Obama had been born in Kenya. (Probably overlapping with those at Cancun who were worrying about DiHydrogen Monoxide.)
The thing I find disturbing is how some US voters seem to have a very short memory. Obama temporarily compromises with Republicans and there’s a significant shift in attitude. Did Obama stop spending more than a trillion dollars extra per year? Did Obama reverse Obamacare? Nope.
As I see it, Obama has done numerous things to destroy the future ability of the US to provide for itself, to employ people, and to defend itself. Yet a month of relatively good behavior is good enough for 5-10% of the population to go back to Obama (in addition to the die-hard group that was already for him).
Well, we’ll see if they stay. I get the feeling Obama did that bipartisan lead up in December just so he could have a Sputnik moment for his State of the Union address rather than talk about the real problems of the US federal government.
Karl, the most plausible explanation I’ve heard for that is that people like Obama personally. He seems so nice, manly, kind. It’s only when he gets his hands on the levers of power that he does evil things. Since the election of the most Republican House in a generation, that seems a remoter possibility, so people are free to like him again.
I said here a long time ago, it’s a pity we can’t elect Obama Head of State, like Queen Elizabeth, so that we could bask in our non-racism and have him give fine speeches at important occasions — and leave the actual governing to someone less clueless.
I had a debate with a friend of mine several weeks back that touched on a lot of things covered in this article. He is a public high school teacher with a degree in education and unsurprisingly he is a fairly far left leaning socialist. Of course, him being what is essentially a member of the clergy of the church of state he has this adamant belief that the government is inherently good and is the only entity that has the ability to fix all the things that the private sector invariably screws up. When I asked him specifically what the public sector does better than the private sector he said that the public sector doesn’t worry about making a profit and therefore is not influenced into making decisions that are purely driven by the need to make more money. He didn’t like it when I pointed out that he as an individual is in fact making a profit in the form of a wage in exchange for providing education services to kids as a larger part of what is essentially a factory that churns out (semi) educated people. The only difference is that instead of having to compete in a free market to entice people to procure education services the school’s profit is generated through compulsory taxation. The article here hit it straight on the head of the nail when it talked about how socialists think there is some “fair” wage and price for everything. Because my friends rebuttal was somewhere along of the lines of — no it’s not profit because everybody involved with the school is just being paid their fair wage and then just enough more to cover expenses to run the place and that’s it. But of course that just begs the questions of what is a fair wage? To whom? For what? But those are logical questions, for him I can tell that many of his opinions and attitudes are born more from an emotional response than from anything else.
Josh, I would say another key element of his delusion is here:
the public sector doesn’t worry about making a profit and therefore is not influenced into making decisions that are purely driven by the need to make more money.
What does it mean to “make money?” In a free country, it means producing something that people value so much they are willing to exchange hours of their labor, i.e. their money, to get it.
That is, in short, if you want to know what you can do that benefits the most people the most — ask what you can do to make money, because that pretty much guarantees you are meeting the needs of many people very well. Conversely, anything you do that doesn’t make money — that can only be supported by forcing people to fund it with tax money — is something that most people probably don’t want done, or want done some other way.
If that doesn’t cause him to re-assess the violent contradiction between his assumption that making money is in any real sense in contradiction to serving the public interest, then he will probably retreat to the fascism and aristocratic arrogance that usually underlies socialism by asserting that the problem with this theory is that people don’t know what is good for them, and so you can’t rely on their free decision of where to spend their money to tell you the public interest. — experts have to tell people what the public interest is, what’s good for us, and force us to pay for it, because we will surely not buy it of our own free will.
That’s funny because when I did make a somewhat similar point this was exactly how he reacted. I can see how he carries this attitude of derision towards people in general because he works at a school that sorta serves as a dumpster for all the troublemakers that none of the other school districts want to have anything to do with. So, he deals with the less desirable on a daily basis and I think this skews his perceptions of people in general a bit. That and I think teachers in general are imbued with this false sense of superiority. What I do find odd is that he thinks his school gets a bad rep because all the magnate schools steal all the smart and talented kids away from his region and this forces all the idiots to concentrate at his. You see, if the smart kids would just serve their sentences at the school campus that was assigned to their neighborhood then the school would be much better for it. Never mind if the students actually get a better education or not it’s the status of the school that is at stake, ferchrisake.
He also touted out the old Marxists troupe that when one group of people become rich then they are doing so by taking advantage of another group which makes them become poorer somehow. I guess to him money is like geology or something. When mountains of money form over here then invariably a valley of poverty is being made elsewhere. He doesn’t realize though that because the idea of wealth is a human construct it does not necessarily have to abide by the laws of physics.
The thing I find disturbing is how some US voters seem to have a very short memory.
More than just disturbing. We may already have past the tipping point. We hit the iceberg and the band is playing. All that’s left is the freezing and the dying and whatever new ship of state comes to replace it.
If too few understand what the founders gave us it’s over. Indiscriminate immigration without the melting pot hastens the end.