100% of My Liberal Friends Take Issue With Thomas Sowell

I saw Dr Sowell's quote in his column this weekend:

Anyone who studies the history of ideas should notice how much more often people on the political left, more so than others, denigrate and demonize those who disagree with them -- instead of answering their arguments.

In the past year, I sought to understand the mindset of my more liberal friends.  About a year or so ago, I tried to re-read Von Mises' Socialism.  The one passage that struck me was his analysis that socialists do NOT want to explain what they are trying to achieve.  If people found out, they wouldn't want it.

I sought out my more liberal friends and asked them to explain to me what they stood for. These are generally well educated people, and quite intellectually bright.  The first few engaged in lots of back and forth emails, but inevitably I was basically told to shut up and f*ck off.  Some were nice about about it, some were not.  I argued that I heard more cussing and filth from TV and radio left's than I did from those on the right.

I would tell them I was in favor of the Constitution of the USA, minimal intrusion of government and not in favor of distribution of wealth.  One Princeton PhD told me that I could only be judged by how much I gave to charity and paid in Federal taxes!!!

So this week, I forwarded this quote verbatim to about 100 "friends", of which I estimated that 4 or 5 were quite liberal.  I wondered what response, if any, I would get.  Most said nothing, or said a little ditty.

But the liberals ALL proved Sowell's point:

Here are some quotes:

Besides finding it <the quote> baseless with regard to my actions (what provoked you to send this to me??), the spirit of this quote is insulting, came unprovoked, and under the guise of wishing for a good 2012.  In fact, by sending this to me, I would say that your actions are much more in tune with the essence of the quote than mine are. You denigrate the left...

The PhD from Princeton warned me:

Beware Sowell makes no sense if you read carefully his whole article. He is good at uttering random statements, grammatically correct, yet without solid foundation to back them. I see you are continuing to inhale smoke.

A less strident lib:

However, in the political realm, it's the right on the attack in recent years.

I'd like an example. If you want examples on the left, just watch any evening with Rachel Maddow.

Folks: This is a repeat of the 1930's, with socialism having made quit a bit of headway with their agenda.  As the economy around the world struggles, those on the left will tell it it is the failure of capitalism that has done it.  They won't tell you what they have in store (but just what Obama's actions).  They tell you that all we need is a "little more" spending, a "little more" (or a lot more) regulation, and a a lot more taxation .. and life will improve.

How can the cure be the disease?


Defend your freedoms!

The President Does NOT Believe in Capitalism!

Here is the critical section from Obama's speech in Kansas this week

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes -- especially for the wealthy -- our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.

Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. (Laughter.) But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked.

An excellent follow-up in the American Spectator.

We Have A Community-Organizer-in-Chief, Where's the President?

I find it hard to refer to Obama as "President", when he is still a "Community Organizer".

According to Wikipedia:

community organizers generally assume that social change necessarily involves conflict and social struggle in order to generate collective power for the powerless.

So you'd think the PRESIDENT of the United States could use his bully pulpit, and its power of persuasion to help tackle state and local government financial problems. After all, if nothing is done, we face a possible collapse of our nation (more on that in a another post..)

But no, if you travel over to BarackObama.com, our President's web site, you will find our President cheering on the masses. He criticizes the Governor:

Republican Governor Walker Scott Walker has proposed a radical plan to take away the collective bargaining rights of public workers. Those who teach and those who plow the snow-filled Wisconsin streets would no longer be able to organize for better working conditions and rights in the workplace.

Since Tuesday, the streets of Madison and the halls of the Capitol building have been filled with thousands of ordinary folks who are sending the strongest message possible to their state legislators—their rights are not up for negotiation.

Organizing for America–Wisconsin, who has been among the most vocal advocates for state employees’ rights, is tweeting live from the rallies and pulling together the voices, videos, and photos of this movement.

Since when have we seen a sitting President back teachers illegally "striking".  Where is the leadership, the help in dealing with crushing fiscal problems? Where is the leadership in addressing runaway public pension costs?

Perhaps what we see is what we can expect from a President who received hundreds of millions of dollars from these "public servants".  Past SEIU President Andy Stern said in 2009:

We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama -- $60.7 million to be exact -- and we're proud of it.

If Obama wants to be a community organizer, he should resign and carry on the fight.  If he wants to be President, he should act like one.

"If We Lose Freedom Here, There's No Place to Escape To"

In 1962, Ronald Reagan gave a pivotal speech that defined him.

The speech is full of memorable phrases that are as relevant today as when he said them.

This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down: [up] man's old -- old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

And do you think of Obamacare when he says:

the full power of centralized government" -- this was the very thing the Founding Fathers sought to minimize. They knew that governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they know when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.

We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one.

The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.

Now that ObamaCare is Passed, The Disaster in the Bill is Becoming Clear

Watch:

Another Brick in the Bureaucratic Wall

I just received this in an email from my broker:

What the 2011 tax changes mean for you.
• When you sell equities (such as stock) acquired in 2011, we will be required to report details about your gain or loss to you and the IRS on Form 1099-B. (Mutual funds, ETFs, fixed income investments, and options will be affected in subsequent years.)

Obama Policies End the American Dream

Barack Obama's policies are becoming crystal clear. Those policies are shutting down the American Dream, shutting them down in favor of a country that looks less like Capitalism, and more like Marxism.

Obama made his point of view very clear on CNBC''s Town Hall program on Monday 9/20.  In response to a question about raising taxes (termed "extending the Bush tax cuts" to deride them), Obama clearly outlined his rationale for raising taxes on "the rich", those families making over $250,000, and  keeping cuts to an already lower-tax group:

• "You probably didn't get a raise" (i.e. you deserve it, I'm on your side in this class struggle).


• "You're more likely to spend it".  (Keynesian economics -- we want spenders, not investors).

So this is a clear class-warfare stance: Those who invest must have their money confiscated; we'll give tax breaks to some only if they spend it.  (The government will make the investment decisions.)  The proletariat will live from pay-check to pay-check and spend all they have.  And that is "good", according to Obama.

This is a doctrine straight out of the words of Karl Marx:

Marx argues that in capitalist society, an economic minority (the bourgeoisie) dominate and exploit an economic majority (the proletariat). Marx argues that capitalism is exploitative, specifically the way in which unpaid labor (surplus value) is extracted from the working class (the labor theory of value), extending and critiquing the work of earlier political economists on value. Such commodification of human labor according to Marx, creates an arrangement of transitory serfdom. He argued that while the production process is socialized, ownership remains in the hands of the bourgeoisie. This forms the fundamental contradiction of capitalist society. Without the elimination of the fetter of the private ownership of the means of production, human society is unable to achieve further development.

In order to overcome the fetters of private property the working class must seize political power internationally through a social revolution and expropriate the capitalist classes around the world and place the productive capacities of society into collective ownership. Upon this, material foundation classes would be abolished and the material basis for all forms of inequality between humankind would dissolve.

Obama, through his words, clearly sees the world as a struggle of classes, between rich and poor in the United States.  He views himself as someone who has been chosen to lead the revolution, as intelligent and benevolent enough to make the tough decisions to fundamentally change America.

Thomas Sowell commented last week on this class warfare and how the Left has twisted words to advance their argument:

Among the many other catchwords that shut down thinking are "the rich" and "the poor." When is somebody rich? When they have a lot of wealth. But, when politicians talk about taxing "the rich," they are not even talking about people's wealth, and what they are planning to tax are people's incomes, not their wealth.

If we stop and think, instead of going with the flow of catchwords, it is clear than income and wealth are different things. A billionaire can have zero income. Bill Gates lost $18 billion dollars in 2008 and Warren Buffett lost $25 billion. Their income might have been negative, for all I know. But, no matter how low their income was, they were not poor.

By the same token, people who have worked their way up, to the point where they have a substantial income in their later years, are not rich. In most cases, they never earned high incomes in their younger years, and they will not be earning high incomes when they retire.

A middle-aged or elderly couple making $125,000 each are not rich, even though politicians will tax away what they have earned at the end of decades of working their way up. Similarly, most of the people who are called "the poor" are not poor. Their low incomes are as transient as the higher incomes of "the rich."


Most of the people in the bottom 20% in income end up in the top half of the income distribution in later years. Far more of them reach the top 20% than remain in the bottom 20% over the years.

The grand fallacy in most discussions of income statistics is the assumption that the various income brackets represent enduring classes of people, rather than transients who start at the bottom in entry-level jobs and move up as they acquire more experience and skills.

But if we are going to base major government policies on confusions between medical care and health care, or on calling people "rich" and "poor" who are neither, then we have truly accepted words as the money of fools.

The American Dream, as Dr. Sowell states, is the ability to start poor, work hard, save and invest to build up a nest egg that allows you, perhaps someday, to invest in a business and employ others ... in the process becoming financially well off.  It's an ebb and flow ... a process, that relies on your skills and determination.

If the government policy is to ensure that if you have excess income, you spend it, and that investing is bad ... how can anyone climb the ladder of success when Big Government is removing the rungs?

The dream has its foundation in the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

So why would President Obama "slip" and leave out the "their Creator" in a speech last week?

Back to Marx's view on religion:

Although Marx was intensely critical of institutionalized religion including Christianity, some Christians have "accepted the basic premises of Marxism and attempted to reinterpret Christian faith from this perspective." Some of the resulting examples are some forms of liberation theology and black liberation theology. [Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for 17+ years] Pope Benedict XVI strongly opposed radical liberation theology while he was still a cardinal, with the Vatican condemning acceptance of Marxism.

Obama and the people that he surrounds himself with all lean to Marxism, and if allowed to carry on extending their consistent polices, will end the American Dream ... perhaps for our lifetime.