Opinion Forum

Random Thoughts

October 16th, 2010

I’ve always found it ironic that although the Left is quite enthusiastic about helping small business, the middle class, and the pursuit of the American dream, they then immediately go on to punish any of those small businessmen or middle class members who actually manage to attain the American dream by becoming rich or successful.

If the Tea Party is Islamophobic because it believes there is a connection between Islam and terrorist attacks, then what does that make members of the Washington Post when they refuse to publish a “Where’s Mohammed?” cartoon for fear of violence?

The Left fervently cites the First Amendment rights of Muslims to build a mosque at Ground Zero, even as it begs Pastor Jones not to burn a Koran with equal fervency in the name of compassion and the prevention of violence. This is merely yet another example of the blatant hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy of the Left. This hypocrisy also exposes their true feelings about the potential of violence within the Tea Party, because if they were really so afraid of Tea Party violence, then Imam Feisal Rauf would have received personal phone calls from Obama and Petraeus a long time ago.

I recently ran across this quote: “To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.” — Charles Krauthammer

Although the Left hates the idea of private monopolies which can only continue to exist through the voluntary support of its customers, it has absolutely no problem with the idea of government monopolies which do not require the voluntary support of its participants and which can call upon the use of force, the ultimate government monopoly, to preserve its own existence. This contradiction is especially bizarre when listening to a Leftist who is criticizing government ineptitude and then calling for greater government control in the same paragraph.

This leads me to my next observation: the different views of human nature on the Left and the Right. Those on the Right generally assume that people are people, and that they behave as people whether they go into business, the professions or politics. The Left, on the other hand, believes that people are people until they chose a profession, whereupon people who go into business or private professions become slavering, selfish monsters, and those who go into government automatically become selfless angels dedicated solely to the public welfare. Leftists will denounce individual politicians as corrupt and pandering, but this disdain somehow never touches their fundamental premise that politicians are inherently better at looking out for our own welfare than we are.

The only reason Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories stand in the way of a peace settlement is because of the implicit assumption that any future Palestinian state will be Judenrein. If the Palestinians’ rationale for fighting stemmed out of a rational, positive desire for a Palestinian state rather than out of hatred for Israel and the Jews, there would be no reason the settlement inhabitants could not simply exist as a Jewish minority under the jurisdiction of the future Palestinian state. Then again, if that were the Palestinians’ real desire, the problem of the Palestinians would have been settled back in 1947.

Prof. Fred Gottheil at the University of Illinois recently decided to test his colleagues’ commitment to “social justice” by taking a list of academics who had signed a petition against Israeli human rights abuses and asking those same people to sign a petition protesting Palestinian human rights abuses, especially abuse of women and homosexuals. Less than 5% of the original group responded. Even worse, of the 169 signers of the Israeli petition who belonged to gender and women’s studies departments, only 5 sent back a positive response to the Palestinian petition. When asked what conclusions he drew from this, he responded: “The academic leftists are caught in an ideologically discriminatory trap of their own making. It turns out that with all their professing of principle, they are sanctimonious bigots at heart.” Three cheers for intellectual honesty, Professor.

Those on the extreme Left often complain that the Rule of Law is a tool which the rich use to protect their property against the poor. Yet if the Rule of Law disappeared and the poor actually managed to seize the property of the rich, how would those newly rich expect to protect their stolen property, except through the Rule of Law? Therefore those who obtain their gains through such means must invariably become hypocrites, lest the forces they have unleashed upon the world return to destroy them for their folly.

I am always amused by those who claim that conservatives and libertarians have an irrational faith in the free market, when in fact not only are there mountains of evidence showing the success of economic freedom, but there are also mountains of evidence (not to mention mountains of corpses) showing the abject failure of economic coercion.

An editorial in the college newspaper the other day said that Democrats should discredit Christine O’Donnell by emphasizing her past dabbling in witchcraft, so that “the first thing on every voter’s mind as they step into the ballot booths in November is an image of Christine O’Donnell cackling over a bubbling cauldron, silhouetted by the light of the full moon.” So much for the Left being the party of religious tolerance!

A political anecdote in true Soviet style: Three men are in jail for their corrupt business activities. When asked what they were in for, the first said, “I set prices too high, thus cheating the consumer and making excessive profits.” The second said, “I set prices too low, thus undercutting the competition and driving them out of business.” The third said, “I kept prices exactly the same, thus creating cartels and engaging in price fixing.”

I recently ran across a theory that Republicans do not actually want to take back the House or Senate. Rather, they want to come close enough to show the Left that the American people side with them, but not actually succeed and thus run the risk of assuming responsibility for possible negative future events. If this is true, then I would suggest that any Republicans who feel this way are too stupid to be in Congress, because only an idiot could honestly believe that the voters are not paying attention to his behavior in office right now.

Articles written by Brianna Aubin
Tags: business, conservatives, Democrats, government, leftists, Republicans
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (6) | Home

6 Responses to “Random Thoughts”

Clarissa | October 16th, 2010 at 10:15 pm

“Prof. Fred Gottheil at the University of Illinois recently decided to test his colleagues’ commitment to “social justice” by taking a list of academics who had signed a petition against Israeli human rights abuses and asking those same people to sign a petition protesting Palestinian human rights abuses, especially abuse of women and homosexuals. Less than 5% of the original group responded.”

-Thank you for writing about this! I have been fuming with anger about this particular brand of hypocrisy (as well as many others) among my colleagues in academia. Do you have convictions, I always want to ask such people, or do you just support whatever cause seems more fashionable and more likely to gain you some friends in academia??? It’s very frustrating to observe that. Just look at how the idea of tolerance has been perverted to mean that all kinds of horrible practices have to be “respected” ecause there is some group that upholds this practice. And when I say it’s wrong and uncivilized (to inflict genital circumcision on women, for example), many of my colleagues want to shut me up because how can I be offensive to another culture? So annoying.

Clarissa | October 16th, 2010 at 10:19 pm

“Yet if the Rule of Law disappeared and the poor actually managed to seize the property of the rich, how would those newly rich expect to protect their stolen property, except through the Rule of Law?”

-There won’t be any “newly rich”, Brianna. Everybody will be equally poor and starving. Except, of course, a couple of thousand people on the very top of the ladder who will make these many poor work themselves into a literal grave to support them in luxury. And then even that will stop working. I know all this because it happened to us in the Soviet Union. 🙂

I had no idea I could like any of your posts this much. 🙂

Brianna | October 16th, 2010 at 10:40 pm

Well, that’s what I meant. Either they need to become hypocrites (i.e. claim the protection of law for their own property even as they throw it out the window while claiming someone else’s), or everybody will be poor because they’ll all just keep stealing from each other.

Clarissa | October 16th, 2010 at 10:45 pm

The problem with abolishing private property is that as soon as you do that, as soon as businesses start belonging to everybody who works for them, everybody stops working. That’s a sad reality that my fellow Progressives don’t want to acknowledge or discuss. And whenever I mention it, everybody gets very annoyed. But I have seen this with my own eyes in the USSR and I don’t want to pretend that I haven’t.

Tom Carter | October 18th, 2010 at 6:06 am

Clarissa, I obviously don’t have your personal experience of life in the Soviet Union. However, I’ve lived, worked, and traveled in Russia and in a number of other formerly communist countries, some of them former republics of the USSR. In reading about them and in innumerable conversations with people in those countries, one clear message always came through — the system robbed them of their individuality, their trust in politicians and their fellow citizens, any belief that businessmen could be honest, and any idea that personal efforts could produce rewards. It was also obvious that when everyone owns something, no one owns it or feels responsible for it.

My first time living in Moscow began in 1992, about six months after the Soviet Union disintegrated. All the old apparatchiki were still in place, from the “window ladies” who made administrative life very difficult to the policemen who were much more feared than relied upon for protection. That was still pretty much the case when I lived there in 95-96, with the addition of a much more open presence of the so-called mafia. (I had some personal experience dealing with a mafia boss who, we thought, might be able to provide a service for the company I was with. He was friendly, wanted very much to be helpful, and scary as hell. We declined any future dealings with him.)

There was an older woman named Valentina working for me in Moscow in 92-93. She was a wonderful person with a remarkable sense of humor, loved by everyone. I once asked her, on April 1, if there was a tradition of celebrating April Fools’ Day. Without missing a beat, she replied, “They fooled us every day for 70 years. Why would we need a special day for it?”

The worst example I encountered of what life can be like under a totalitarian communist system was in Albania, where I lived for six months. The Enver Hoxha regime was a true nightmare, and the stories I heard about life during those years were terrible.

People who think pure socialism or communism could be good if they were just implemented correctly are ignorant fools.

Clarissa | October 25th, 2010 at 8:24 am

“The system robbed them of their individuality, their trust in politicians and their fellow citizens, any belief that businessmen could be honest, and any idea that personal efforts could produce rewards. It was also obvious that when everyone owns something, no one owns it or feels responsible for it.”

-The tragedy of those countries is that once you kill the spirit of entrepreneurship through genocide and persecutions, it’s next to impossible to get it back. In my early twenties, I used to make very good money in Ukraine working as a translator. I had friends who were so poor that they would faint in the street out of hunger. Every time, however, when I asked them to work with me in their own profession and for very good money, they refused with indignation. Working for an honest living was seen as a very unprestigious thing.

Sad, indeed.