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Socialism Is Anti-Democracy

NPC, socialism, democracy, freedom

Common sense politics must peer beneath the superficial attractions of “democratic socialism.”

In “Civil Liberties and Socialism Don’t Mix,” Matthew Harwood explains why those who call themselves democratic socialists may “say they believe in civil liberties” nevertheless “will always be hostile to individual freedom.”

In this short Reason piece, Mr. Harwood starts out by showing that socialism cannot merely be “a more generous welfare state along Nordic lines.” For “socialism” to remain distinct socialists must offer a Unique Selling Proposition. You cannot plausibly push a “new” philosophy and stick to pushing the old liberal stand-​bys of private property and markets.

Their own pretensions force them back to central planning, to economic planning for all by a few.

Which is not democratic, of course. It goes far further, to anti-​majoritarian.

Actual economic planning requires micromanagement. Harwood quotes socialist economist and luminary Robert Heilbroner, who expresses this requirement as “the necessity to intervene deeply, and probably ruthlessly, into the economy in order to establish the socialist order in the first place.”  

But it cannot stop there. Once established, a socialist state must feel a “need to continue a policy of painful intervention” to adjust to “the constricting limits of the environment.”

“Democratic socialism is not freedom,” Harwood concludes. “It is authority paternalistically dressed up in the language of liberation and wielded on behalf of that fuzzy abstraction, ‘the people,’ regardless of what flesh and blood individuals want.”

Sure, democratic socialists may hope that majorities will allow their elites to plan for everybody. 

But once that handoff is made, the power obtained, then the tyranny.

Inescapably.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob

 

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Accountability ideological culture media and media people Popular

Fakes & Facts

Snopes, fake news, Trump, Elizabeth Warren, truth

“There was truth and there was untruth,” George Orwell wrote in his classic novel, 1984, “and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

In the Age of Trump and Fake News, way past 1984, I’m hanging on for dear sanity.

Earlier this week, I commented on the brouhaha between the president and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D‑Mass.). Today, I have a bone to pick with Snopes, the faux-​fact-​checking site, which found this statement to be TRUE: “President Donald Trump offered to donate $1 million to a charity of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s choice if she would take a DNA test to demonstrate that she had Native American ancestry.”

Not “Mostly True” with some explanation, but just “True.” Problem is, that statement is false.

Mr. Trump did not make that offer; he promised people at a Montana rally that he would make such an offer in the future, if he found himself “in the middle of the debate, when she proclaims that she is of Indian [sic] heritage.”

Splitting hairs? Where is the split? Here is President Trump’s full statement.

Snopes was hardly alone in misreporting Trump. The Hill titled its story, “Trump denies offering $1 million for Warren DNA test, even though he did.” The Washington Post parroted The Hill’s “fact-​checked headline.” Other major outlets from CNN to the Miami Herald declared, falsely, that Trump had made the offer.

Look, I don’t blame Warren for goading Trump to pay up. That’s the political game.

But the media, especially fact-​checkers, should be diligent about what precisely the president has said — not playing that game.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability folly ideological culture national politics & policies Popular

A Fraction of a Reaction

“A little dab’ll do ya.”

That was from Brylcream, not 23andme.

President Donald Trump has been mocking Senator Warren, relentlessly, for her claims to native American heritage, calling her “Pocahontas.”* Some have dubbed him “racist” for doing this, but his point was plausibly anti-racist. In 1995, Harvard Law School ballyhooed her as its first “first woman of color” hire. 

 Some argue Warren benefited from this racial categorization, but that’s not been shown. Warren has ceased labeling herself Native American and defended her belief that she was of Cherokee or Delaware descent based on family lore as well as her physiognomy (“high cheekbones”). 

“Let’s say I’m debating Pocahontas,” Trump declared during an uproarious routine at a Montana rally back in July, promising the crowd that “when she proclaims that she is of Indian heritage,” he would toss her a DNA kit and offer: “I will give you a million dollars, to your favorite charity, paid for by Trump, if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian.”

Under pressure, Warren took a DNA test.** And (inadvisedly?) made a big deal about it.

Upshot? Six to ten generations ago she may indeed have had one ancestor who was a native American. The post-​test squabbles have been mostly embarrassing, but Trump at least had the wit to note the lower end of Warren’s native mix was “1/​1024, far less than the average American.”

The “memed” jokes on the Internet have been hilarious.

But who gets the last laugh? While we allow ourselves to be done in by little dabs of trivia, the great crises of our age build ominously. 

At what ratio, though, I don’t know.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* And then apologizing to the real Pocahontas for the comparison.

** The full story of who she went to, and the reliability of her DNA report, is itself bizarre and complicated. See “Did Elizabeth Warren Just Kill Identity Politics?” See also Tim Pool.

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Categories
ideological culture Popular too much government

The Irony Law of Socialism

Under capitalism, said the old socialists, “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Today’s socialists admit this hoary “immiseration thesis” is old hat.

“The socialist argument against capitalism isn’t that it makes us poor,” explains City University of New York Professor Corey Robin in the New York Times. “It’s that it makes us unfree.”

Unfree?

Nick Gillespie at Reason tries to make sense of that breathtaking inversion of the usual anti-​socialist argument, which Gillespie characterizes as the invocation of “Stalin, the Great Leap Forward, or even Hugo Chavez.”*

But is there really anything new here? 

“When my well-​being depends upon your whim, when the basic needs of life compel submission to the market and subjugation at work, we live not in freedom but in domination,” writes the tax-​funded socialist professor. He wants “to establish freedom from rule by the boss, from the need to smile for the sake of a sale,” which is so very not new. It’s reminiscent of Oscar Wilde’s “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” which imagined rescue “from that sordid necessity of living for others.”

How real-​world socialism “frees” us, though, is palpably oppressive: by burdening business and labor and trade with taxes, prohibitions, regulations.

And constant bullying. 

The ironies abound, too. Gillespie notes that “Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez may rail against the gig economy, but just like Bernie and Warren she uses Uber every chance she gets.” Jim Carrey praises “free” medicine in Canada, acknowledging no costs.

The cost of “free stuff” is actual freedom. And the cost of actual freedom is paying for what you get, and not getting what you won’t pay for.

That’s the Irony Law of Socialism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Gillespie also says it is unpersuasive. Well, unpersuasive to whom? As always, many arguments for the truth are necessary.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies Popular too much government

Pulling It Off

Cornel West, socialism, socialist, Venezuela, starvation

Give democratic socialism a chance? 

So says Dr. Cornel West, the “provocative democratic intellectual” who serves as one of eight honorary co-​chairs of the Democratic Socialists of America. 

This accomplished Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University, and Professor Emeritus at Princeton, explained to Fox News host Tucker Carlson that socialism’s “fundamental commitment is to the dignity of ordinary people and to make sure they can lead lives of decency.”

“What happened in Venezuela?” Carlson asked West. “They called that democratic socialism. But they don’t have toilet paper and it’s less equal than ever.”

“But part of the problem is though, brother,” the professor responded, “that any time there [have] been attempts by ordinary people to engage in self-​determination, they can get crushed by external nations. Look at U.S. policies toward Venezuela [which have] been very, very ugly — Nicaragua in the same way.”

West offered nary a specific to his charge, but was handy stating his conclusion. “So, we have never had a chance to really pull it off,” the “it” being socialism. 

“So it’s only been a movement so far.”*

How convenient.

West implicitly acknowledges that those ruling Venezuela and Nicaragua are practicing socialism. But he won’t hold them or the ‑ism responsible for the economic collapse, the hunger, the exodus of millions of very desperate “ordinary” citizens, the arbitrary arrests, use of torture and murder of innocent citizens. 

Dr. West, a follow-​up question: Just what specific U.S. policy triggered these socialists to murder and torture their own people?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Dr. West also announced that socialism “is not an ‘ism,’ brother.” I think the professor needs to take a course in ism-ology.

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Photo by Gage Skidmore

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture meme moral hazard national politics & policies Popular

Re-​Segregation

segregation, bias, right, left, conservative, liberal, water fountains

It is hard not to miss the ideological left’s inconsistency regarding “diversity”: demanding diversity of race and gender, they enforce a monoculture that somehow cannot tolerate intellectual and political competition.

We see this in 

  • higher education, dominated by left-​of-​center professors and administrators; 
  • in the news media, overwhelmingly filled with Democrats; and 
  • even in the corporate world, especially in HR Departments.

That some areas of life are filled with one type of person, and others with a different kind, should shock no one. But the intolerance of this? It has recently become extra extreme on the left: De-​platforming, physical attacks on free speech, censuring and firing employees who dare offer facts inconvenient for progressivism. When a senior Facebook engineer attempted to bring in tolerance and diversity, what should have been a non-​story received national attention.*

It amounts to a new segregationism. 

People are segregating more and more in their communities based on income and culture (see Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort) — despite many of these same self-​segregators support for Martin Luther King’s civil rights agenda of de-segregation. 

Another current trend is shunning. When it was discovered, the other day, that the In-​N-​Out burger chain had contributed $25,000 to the California Republican Party, the Twitterverse cooked up something special: “#BoycotInNOut — let Trump and his cronies support these creeps” … well, that gem is from the chair of the California Democratic Party.

Apparently, this Democratic Party official is demanding separate eating establishments for progressives and conservatives.

But hey, where would I eat?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Arguably, many of the stories we fret about should be non-​stories — as in, “none of our business.” But when some people make others’ business theirs, the stories just will not stay local.

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