Archive for October 22nd, 2008

22
Oct

Pieces of Wisdom – F. A Hayek Edition

   Posted by: Aurelius    in Economics, Pieces of Wisdom

-A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

-Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one’s government is not necessarily to secure
freedom.

-Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality

-an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.

Above from Brainyquote.

-To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.

-The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

Above from Famous-quote.net.

-“It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarian. It began quite openly as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution. The French writers who laid its foundation had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial government. The first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, predicted that those who did not obey his
proposed planning boards would be “treated as cattle.”

-“Who can seriously doubt that the power which a millionaire, who may be my employer, has over me is very much less thanthat which the smallest bureaucrat possesses who wields the coercive power of the state and on whose discretion it depends how I am allowed to live and work?”

-“To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, islikely to make us do much harm.”

From Thinkexist.com.

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22
Oct

“Socialist” is a Codeword?

   Posted by: Aurelius    in 2008 Election Follies, Climate Change, Economics

In the Kansas City Star, Lewis Diuguid has this perspective:

The “socialist” label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality.

There is a very good reason that Hoover used this term to describe radical members of the African American community:  They were socialists.

Duiguid then lists M.L. King Jr. [1] [2], W.E.B. DuBois [1] [2], and Paul Robeson [1] [2] [3], supposedly as examples of African American leaders who were not socialists.  Discussions of their socialist leanings are in the numbered links.

McCain and Palin have simply reached back in history to use an old code word for black. It set whites apart from those deemed unAmerican and those who could not be trusted during the communism scare.

So, because a number of African American leaders were Socialists, somehow, in the minds of Caucasians, the word Socialists conjours up racist images of African Americans.

Now, speaking as a Caucasian (I dislike the word “white”, becuase I am more of a pale pink color, generally – except when I forget to wear sunscreen on the beach, when I become more of a steamed-lobster red), when I head the word Socialist, the images that come to my mind Lenin, Marx, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and most Europeans.  Images of King, DuBois, and Robeson are way down the list, and I usually don’t get to them.

To my mind, and I think I am fairly typical on the Right Wing, the word Socialist is only Code for “Redistribution of Wealth” and “From each According to his abilities, to each according to his needs”.  It is Code for am economic theory that destroys productivity and inexorably leads to the loss of individual rights, in favor of collective rights.  With the Socialist pied-pipers being More-Equal than the rest of us.

I agree that the McCain campaign is using the Socialist label to draw a distinction in the minds of the American people between those that support our free market system, and those that wish to take America fully down the road to being just another failed Socialist state.  The Socialists and Communists could not be trusted during the red scare, and they cannot be trusted with the reins of power now.

Mr. Duiguid should probably read Animal Farm, to understand where the Socialist movement wants to take us.

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