Contributed by: filbert Friday, October 01 2010 @ 03:01 PM CST
Whether hard communism or soft socialism, statism does not work. We all know why — it goes against human nature, rewarding mediocrity and punishing merit, professing egalitarianism for the masses, while the operators of the system, whether the old Soviet apparatchiks or the new crony EU Brussels bureaucrats, satisfy their appetites like capitalists.
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Most of what we are told about universities is untrue. America’s reputation for higher learning excellence (in business, sciences, medicine, engineering, and finance) is despite not because of the humanities and social sciences. Current research in the liberal arts (the portfolio the English or sociology prof is tenured on) increasingly has almost no relevance to the general public or applicability to teaching or even scholarly merit.
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I fly to an airport, have a minute, and access over 60 million words of the corpus of ancient Greek literature in between flights. Big deal?
The strange thing is that none of this has been quite factored into fossilized metrics that supposedly quantify the standard of living, poverty rates, GDP, etc. In the grocery line not long ago, two teens were chatting in Spanish to relatives by iPhone in distant Mexico. Are they impoverished or enjoying a privilege exclusive to royalty just forty years ago?
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I cannot fathom how the Democratic Party became run by those who live lives nothing remotely similar to what they profess. Yes, I know the Roosevelt-Kennedy tradition of limousine liberals, but today’s chasm between word and deed is stunning — and never remarked on. Are we to believe that prep-schooled and Ivy Leagued millionaire Barack Obama is the blue-collar face of the Democratic Party, while one of twelve children John Boehner is some sort of J.P. Morgan insider rich man? No wonder that Obama must fake his cadences, bowl, and try to eat cabbage instead of arugula.
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Yeah, it’s another “Read The Whole Thing” article. And yes, Victor Davis Hanson is a Democrat. In California.
The opposition to the Obama/Pelosi/Reid statist takeover of the United States is not a kneejerk thing. It is deep, principled, and based solidly in the foundational political traditions of this country. The Tea Parties will not go away. Calling them names makes them–us–stronger, more determined, more resolved.
This war against freedom is as old as mankind, and it is never truly won. But it is never truly lost, either.
We will be free.
And, if you’re rolling your eyes right now, be careful. While you’re aiming that gun of government power at us, your eye-roll will be all the opening we of the liberty movement will need to take that gun away from you, strip it down into pieces, and scatter them so that it will again take you centuries to put it back together again.
Because we know something you don’t. We know that you can’t help yourself–that you are compelled to put that gun together and point it at us. It’s part of what makes us all human. But we also know that there is a better way than pointing guns at each other.
Freedom. Liberty. Individual responsibility.
We invite you to join us.