Why socialists need capitalism: Best explanation so far

Have you heard of the shocking and terrifying diaper gap that is now dividing this nation? It is said to be so dire that the White House is urging immediate government assistance to buy baby diapers. Philosophically, this puts disposable plastic consumer products in the category of inalienable rights guaranteed by the government: among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Diapers.

When I lived in the USSR, our Soviet Constitution also guaranteed that our basic needs be provided to us by the caring socialist government. As a result, most basic items were in shortage, let alone such luxury items as coffee or toilet paper. Needless to say, we never even heard of disposable diapers. For our three children, we used pieces of cloth which we washed regularly. We didn’t complain or feel disadvantaged because — I repeat — we had no idea there was such a thing as disposable diapers. Those only existed in the decadent West, where greedy corporations created such a product to boost their capitalist profits. But we were blocked from this information by the Iron Curtain, and what we didn’t know couldn’t hurt us.

Now I live in America, where the decadent capitalist diapers are about to become a basic “human right” guaranteed by the federal government.

About twenty years ago no one used cell phones because they hadn’t yet been created by greedy capitalist corporations, who have since covered the planet with a network of cellular towers. Now free cell phones — known as Obamaphones — have become a “human right” guaranteed by the government.

Internet service didn’t exist either, until greedy capitalist corporations surrounded the world with cables and satellites. Now Internet service has become a “human right” provided by the U.S. government to the needy.

Condoms, birth control pills, and other modern contraceptives also didn’t exist until they were invented, researched, and mass-produced by greedy capitalist corporations. Now they have become a basic “human right” guaranteed and provided by the government.

Vaccines for Ebola and other exotic diseases didn’t exist until they were developed by greedy capitalist corporations and almost immediately declared a “human right” for anyone in the Third World.

Healthcare with all its modern diagnostic equipment, appliances, treatments, and a vast array of pharmaceuticals, from Tylenol to Viagra, also didn’t exist until greedy capitalist corporations…

And so on and so forth.

Capitalism just keeps churning out all these new products, which our increasingly socialist government then declares “human rights” and taxes these very producers in order to provide their products to the people for free.

Some call it harmonious coexistence, but there’s a catch. The more the socialist government expands its functions by guaranteeing an ever expanding number of “human rights,” the more it needs to tax capitalist producers, which undercuts their ability to develop, manufacture, and market new products. Once they reach a tipping point when capitalism is no longer viable, this will also end the propagation of “human rights” in the form of new goods and services.

Socialism conserves the stage in which the society existed at the time it was overtaken. Cubans still drive American cars from the 1950s, North Koreans still dress in the fashions of the same bygone era, and in the USSR I grew up in a government-owned house that was taken from the rich and given to the needy in 1920s and remained without indoor plumbing or running water and with ancient electrical wiring until it was condemned and demolished in 1986.

A planned economy is mostly focused оn providing the basic needs that have already been declared “human rights,” and even then it struggles to keep up with the demand. The USSR had smart inventors and brilliant scientists, but the first personal computer was built in a Californian garage and not in a Siberian one — because America had free enterprise and the USSR didn’t. In the absence of free markets and competition, innovation becomes an almost insurmountable task. There is no time nor money for new products and services; that way it’s also easier for the government to run the economy. And when the people don’t know what they are missing, there’s no reason to be unhappy.

That, however, works best when the rest of the world no longer has competing capitalist economies and no nation lives better than the rest. For example, if it weren’t for capitalist America and Western Europe with their never ending innovation and higher living standards, it would have been a lot easier for Soviet citizens to remain content with their socialist government and thus the USSR would probably still exist.

But wouldn’t it be great if the entire world lived like one socialist village — even if it conserved some ancient technology — and people wouldn’t be missing any consumer products they knew nothing about anyway? Absolutely not — and for a reason that is allegedly dear to every socialist in the West: environmental protection. Centrally planned economies of the Eastern Bloc, China, and other socialist states inevitably became some of the world’s worst polluters.

On the one hand they were stuck with outdated technologies, and on the other they had no budgets for cleanup. Their grimy and polluting state-run factories had to meet their production quotas at any cost, for the glory of the Motherland — even if it meant the destruction of the Motherland’s environment and endangering the health of workers and local residents. Complaining to the state about the actions of the state would be pointless and often more dangerous than breathing bad air and drinking polluted water.

Having the entire world adhering to this model would have resulted in an environmental apocalypse and there would be no Greenpeace to bemoan it because that would mean economic sabotage and the activists would by default become enemies of the state.

Whatever innovations the Soviet planned economy introduced came from the West. The Soviet planners also learned from the West about the real cost of things in the modern world, since their own pricing mechanisms had been removed decades ago with the elimination of free markets.

Thus, socialists are better off with capitalism to invent new products that will be later declared “human rights,” allowing expansion of government functions to new areas, as well as to generate wealth that pays for socialist programs. Likewise, socialists are better off having the rich to subsidize the creation and mass production of new goods and services, and later to pay taxes so that the government can provide these goods and services to others for free.

This leads us to the following conclusions, which socialists can’t refute because it correlates with their own logic:

  1. The longer socialists wait to take over the power, the more technologically advanced society they will get to conserve.
  2. It is more beneficial for the people of all classes, including socialists, to delay the socialist revolution indefinitely.
  3. To delay the socialist takeover is also better for the environment because only capitalism has the power of innovation and the resources to create less polluting technologies, materials, and alternative energy sources. To impose socialism right away would mean to put the planet at risk of never resolving the environmental problems we face today.
  4. Since capitalism generates goods and services that socialists later designate as “human rights,” it is also in the interest of human rights to keep capitalism around indefinitely.

Socialists often describe the world as if it has always been as it exists today, leaving out the dimension of time. But time is a major factor because the world has never been static — and that includes nations, cultures, ethnicities, technologies, sciences, and popular perceptions, such as human rights. The main question that needs to be answered, therefore, is not as much who, where, and how — but “when?”

For example, switching to socialism directly from feudalism would have conserved the society at an early stage, without the host of various “human rights” that were unheard of at the time. According to Marx, humanity needed to go through the stage of capitalism in order to develop the necessary wealth, technologies, and educated populations before the socialists could take over.

But how do we know when the time is right for such a takeover? According to Marx and Lenin, a revolutionary situation exists when the upper classes no longer can, and the lower classes no longer want, to preserve the system, plus there exists a strong revolutionary party that can organize the masses.

Such a party, or rather a conglomerate of radical leftist movements, already exists — and it has been flexing its muscles in Ferguson, Baltimore, and most recently in Chicago, disrupting capitalist Donald Trump’s voter rally. But the first two preconditions for a socialist revolution in America simply do not exist because this country has never had natural static classes, such as the capitalist oppressors ruling over the oppressed workers and peasants. American society has always been dynamic, with unprecedented rates of upward mobility.

Socialists have been trying to update the Marxist formula by redefining “capitalist oppressors” as “hetero-normative patriarchy” and “oppressed workers and peasants” as “sexual, racial, ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities,” but all their efforts to artificially polarize and destabilize the system have failed to create a revolutionary situation, despite all the tangible damage they have done to the country and to the minds of the growing generation.

Showing the lack of delayed gratification, socialists chant, “When do we want it? Now!” But if they had taken over, for instance, in the 1960s, Americans would have never been able to enjoy such “human rights” as free Internet, free cell phones, or free disposable diapers. Americans would be living today the way we lived in the USSR around the 1980s. There would be no affordable personal computers, tablets, eBooks, iTunes, Google, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter.

Now that all these capitalist wonders exist, is it finally time? What if we miss the next life-changing technological development that will happen in a year or two? What if it will be a new cheap and clean energy source that will make fossil fuels obsolete? What if it will become a new “human right” that will make all the previous “human rights” pale in comparison?

Speaking of which, how do we know when is a good time to declare the next consumer product a “human right”? If we are serious about it, there has to be a mathematical formula that allows us to calculate with precision the exact time when any given product is no longer a novelty but a “human right.”

This is how the process happens today, time-wise.

  1. When capitalist entrepreneurs create a new product or service, it is usually expensive and is only available to the rich.
  2. Once rich customers have parted with enough money to buy the new product, the entrepreneurs have accumulated enough capital to send it to mass production, making it affordable to the middle class.
  3. Once the market is saturated, the government steps in, declares the product a “human right,” and provides it to the needy for free. All the costs are covered by the taxes extracted from the entrepreneurs who invented the product and from the rich who already paid for its mass production.

Therefore, THR (Time for Human Rights) = ?

I’m not a mathematician, so I will rely on the readers to help me create a sensible equation that includes timing, cost, saturation, taxation, etc. From this equation our politicians can derive time (T) when someone’s consumer product (CP) becomes everyone’s human right (HR).

Bernie Sanders recently declared categorically that healthcare is a “human right.” He didn’t mention when exactly it became a human right: at the dawn of civilization (when no one lived over thirty), during feudalism (when the village blacksmith was also the tooth surgeon), during the industrial revolution (when everything was treated with leeches), or just recently, when capital investments in R&D produced lasers and the MRI?

Is Bernie in possession of the above THR formula, which he won’t share with the toiling masses? If not, we can only conclude that he simply throws around words without knowing what they really mean, whenever he feels like it.

Without a foolproof THR formula to calculate the exact time when a consumer product becomes a “human right,” one can easily embarrass himself. Imagine if in the past the White House had expanded “human rights” to include the ownership of top hats, horse buggies, eight-track players, or VCRs. The only ones benefitting from it today would be standup comedians.

But judging by my Soviet experience, socialists are also in possession of a formula telling them when government-created “human rights” are due to expire — which always happens as soon as they gain total control of any country.

Any government powerful enough to give the people all that they want (e.g., free phones, Internet, or disposable diapers) is also powerful enough to take from the people all that they have.

And that is no laughing matter.

RELATED ARTICLE: Self-Sufficiency, Not Government Spending, Should Be the Measure of Antipoverty Progress

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the American ThinkerThe proposed equation of THR (Time for Human Rights) is now being discussed at the People’s Cube and there already are some excellent suggestions. Follow this link.

Defending Free Speech in an Islamic Europe

“Keep the Faith. Don’t be intimidated. You might as well be killed standing than crawling on your knees.” – Lars Hedegaard

LISTEN to this interview with Lars Hedegaard Founder of the Danish and International Free Press Societies that aired on the Lisa Benson show, Sunday, March 13, 2016:

Hedegaard discusses his struggle and survival fighting a Palestinian émigré shooter disguised as a Danish postman in an attempted assassination in February 2013 by who fled Denmark. Today he lives under 24/7 protection of the Danish security police in what he calls “a near Fort Knox-like complex.” He addresses Denmark’s inundation in the current massive wave of Muslim immigration, desperate assertion of border control and repression of free speech concerning the Islamization of Europe.  See our original interview with Hedegaard published in the New English Review Press collection, The West Speaks. 

Hedegaard was forthright, honest about his experience in the face of the attempt on his life in February 2013 by a Palestinian émigré, a well educated engineer who had become radicalized.  The perpetrator, “BH”, as Lars discussed on the program fled Denmark only to be arrested in Turkey in April 2014, later traded to release Turkish diplomats in Mosul, Iraq in October, despite Danish extradition requests. “BH” could have ended up in Syria with the Islamic State, as did a colleague who Hedegaard said had been killed by the Americans recently. Almost Kafkaesque  was Hedegaard’s discussions of the fines levied recently on him and others in the Danish Free Press Society publishing group, other Danish  media and Pegida.dk for revealing “BH’s” true identity.

His discussion of the political and social environment in neighboring Sweden, that we heard from Kent Ekeroth, Sweden Democrat and Riksdag parliament deputy in our interviews with him, is appalling. Hedegaard spoke of Geert Wilders being denied speaking in Sweden by hordes of protesters, persecuted Jews of Malmo fleeing Sweden for safety and the rapine misogyny of Muslim migrant males inflicted on unwary Swedish girls and women.  In Sweden, today, “it is nearly impossible to hold an open meeting.”

Hedegaard gave to truth to power about the ineptness of the current center right ruling coalition government in Denmark.  He suggests that the public outrage in his country presages a move to the right politically in the hopes that might stanch Islamic immigration and bolstering free speech from intimidation by the EU and sharia Islamic blasphemy.

While Denmark’s Jews may not be as threatened as our Sweden’s; nevertheless, Hedegaard cited the recent occurrence of a 16 year girl Islamic convert from Kundby, Denmark and her 24 year old boyfriend, an ISIS returning fighter ‘mentor’, caught attempting to bomb a Jewish Day school in Copenhagen. More of that, as Hedegaard opined, might spur sending Denmark’s 6,400 Jews to Israel, Canada or the US which as he pointed the Jewish community made many contributions to the Scandinavian country.

Hedegaard readily admitted that he is not a man of the right by virtue of his former Marxist political background that he now rejects. Nevertheless, he believes that background has enabled him to analyze the dangers of Islamization to his country, Europe and the West.  His response to a final question about what message he wanted to send to the Lisa Benson Show program listeners, “Keep the Faith. Don’t be intimidated. You might as well be killed standing than crawling on your knees.”  Brought a rejoinder from host Benson about a General saying, “keep up the fire.” That reminded this writer of how Danish editorial cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, responded to a similar question in a 2009 interview , “free speech, use it!!”

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.

Why Students Give Capitalism an ‘F’ by B.K. Marcus

bernie sanders half of a sign socialismNot only are young voters more likely to support Democrats than Republicans, they are also more likely to support the most left-wing Democrats. In recent polls of voters under 30, self-declared democratic socialist Bernie Sanders beats the more mainstream Hillary Clinton by almost six-to-one.

Former professor Mark Pastin, writing in the Weekly Standard, acknowledges some of Clinton’s flaws as a candidate, but concludes that “the most compelling explanation” for young Democrats’ overwhelming preference for Sanders “is that young voters actually like the idea of a socialist revolution.”

I’m embarrassed to confess that when I was a young voter, I probably would have been among the “Sandernistas.”

I don’t think Pastin is right about the revolution, though. Much of Sanders’s success in defanging the word socialism is in pairing it with an emphasis on democracy, as George Bernard Shaw and the Fabians did in an earlier era. Democratic socialists — at least among my comrades — preferred the idea of evolutionary socialism, and we tried hard to distance ourselves from the revolutionary folks.

Whether by evolution or revolution, however, what we all sought was less competition and more cooperation, less commerce and more compassion. Above all, we wanted greater equality.

“When I asked my students what they thought socialism meant,” Pastin writes, “they would generally recite some version of the Marxist chestnut ‘from each according to ability and to each according to need.'” That sounds about right, but add to that the assumption that it’s government’s job to effect the transfer.

My father, gently skeptical of my politics, pointed out a problem confronting American socialists: we tended to imagine ourselves on the receiving end of the redistribution — rob from the rich and give to the rest of us. “However poor we may think we are in the United States,” he told me, “we would have to give up most of what we now have in order to make everyone in the world equal.” This was strange to hear from someone always behind on the rent and facing ever-growing debt.

Pastin makes a related point: “I’ve always thought that socialism appealed to students because they have never not been on the receiving end of government largesse.”

As an informal test of his students’ egalitarian beliefs, Pastin “would offer to run the class along socialist principles, such as the mandate to take from the able and give to the needy.” Specifically, he proposed subtracting points from the A students and transferring them to those who would otherwise earn lower grades.

Even the most ardent socialist students balked at this arrangement. In fact, according to Pastin, the highest-performing students were both more likely to be self-declared socialists and more likely to meet his proposal with outrage: grading, they argued, should be a matter of merit.

Is it pure hypocrisy on the part of these rhetorical radicals, or is there a logical consistency behind this apparent contradiction in their values?

Trying to recall the details of my own callow political folly, I seem to recall three main issues behind my anti-capitalistic mentality:

  1. “Capitalism” was just the word we all used for whatever we didn’t like about the status quo, especially whatever struck us as promoting inequality. I had friends propose to me that we should consider the C-word a catchall for racism, patriarchy, and crony corporatism. If that’s what capitalism means, how could anyone be for it?
  2. Even when we left race and sex out of the equation, our understanding of commerce was zero-sum: the 1 percent grew rich by exploiting the 99 percent.
  3. For whatever reason, none of us imagined we’d ever be business people, except on the smallest possible scale: at farmer’s markets, as street vendors, in small shops. Those things weren’t capitalism. Capitalism was big business: McDonald’s, IBM, the military-industrial complex.

I don’t know how many of today’s young socialists hold these same assumptions, but a question recently posted to Quora.com sounds like it could have been written by one of my fellow lefties in the 1980s: “Should I drop out of college to disobey the capitalist world that values a human with a piece of paper?” (See Praxis strategist Derek Magill’s withering advice to the would-be dropout.)

Even if a different array of confusions drives the radical chic of millennial voters, what is clear is that they see American capitalism as rigged. “Crony capitalism,” from their perspective, is redundant — and “free market” is an oxymoron. They’re not necessarily opposed to meritocracy; they just don’t see what merit has to do with the marketplace.

Grading that would penalize the studious to reward the slackers is obviously unfair, and a sure-fire strategy to kill anyone’s incentive to do the homework. It’s not that the socialist students are applying the principle inconsistently; it’s that they don’t see what merit has to do with commerce. Some of that may be intellectual laziness, some is the result of indoctrination by anti-capitalist faculty, but much of it is also based in the reality of America’s mixed economy.

Not only have young voters spent most of their lives sheltered from the productive side of the commercial world, schooled by men and women who are themselves deliberately insulated from the marketplace, but time spent in the reality of the private sector is hardly an education in what the advocates of economic freedom have in mind when we talk about the free market.

If my own experience is any guide, today’s democratic socialists will have to spend a lot of time unlearning much of what they’ve been taught.

Pastin’s informal experiment is an illuminating first step, and it’s a powerful way to expose the conflict between his students’ understanding of merit and the socialists’ understanding of equality. But there’s also a danger in comparing the economy to the classroom. By offering his grade redistribution as an analogy for socialism, Pastin seems to imply that the merit-based grade system better resembles a free market. But that’s silly.

For one thing, studying hard for your next exam may improve your own GPA, but it probably doesn’t help your classmates. In contrast, an unhampered marketplace makes everyone better off, however unequally.

More significantly, in a free economy, there is no one person in the role of the grade-giving professor. In the absence of coercion, power has a hard time remaining that centralized. Yes, wealth can be seen as a kind of grade, but in the free market, an entrepreneur’s profits and losses are like millions of cumulative grades from the consumers. A+ for improving our lives. F for wasting time and resources.

That kind of spontaneous, decentralized, self-regulating prosperity is every bit as radical as the visions of young socialists, minus the impoverishing effects of coerced redistribution. It’s almost certainly not what they imagine when they say they oppose “capitalism.”

B.K. MarcusB.K. Marcus

B.K. Marcus is editor of the Freeman.

MUSIC VIDEO: Wake Up, You Need To Make Money by Jeffrey Tucker

There is no shortage of complaints about millennials. You bump into them everywhere. But maybe it is time to think carefully about what makes this generation’s frustrations so distinctive, even understandable.

To grasp the frustrations, even despair, of the twenty somethings, you could cite vast data on unemployment, low wages, shattered friend networks, boomerang living arrangements, and frustrated hopes. In this respect, millennials are suffering the most, losing jobs even as every other age group is gaining them.

Or you could just turn on the radio and hear it for yourself. Pop music has always provided revealing insight into the minds of its consumers.

Reflect, for example, on this line from a song rising in the charts right now: “Out of student loans and treehouse homes we all would take the latter.”

Treehouses? They are charming, the stuff of fond childhood memories. The simple joys of childhood are looking pretty great to this highly educated generation. In the past, this age group revelled in youth and looked to an awesome future. Now we see signs of a bizarre atavism settling in among today’s young adults.

Dreaming of Infancy

The song is “Stressed Out” by “Twenty One Pilots.” It captures the mood of the moment. The most memorable motif is this recurring sentiment: “Wish we could turn back time, to the good ol’ days.”

And what are those days? Sometime between infancy and adulthood, “when our momma sang us to sleep.” These were times of safety, material provision, no real responsibility, and fun. This contrasts with their bleak prospects  immediately following college. “Now we’re stressed out,” the lyrics lament.

Why stressed out? Students loans, for sure. They have sat in classrooms for 16 years to prepare, making them the most studied generation in American history. And yet, where’s the payoff? Where is the fabulous status that they expected? It turns out that they entered the workforce with no relevant experience, which means they lack a realistic conception about what it means to provide more value in than you take out of a company. And once they do manage to make money, the bulk of what remains after taxes (to pay for systems they will never use) goes toward paying interest on the student loan.

But in a larger sense, the longing for a bygone era is about the perception of progress. Can we expect to be richer, more comfortable, and more secure than our parents? Or is the trajectory of history getting worse? These questions awaken our inner eschatologist and shape our understanding of our place in history. What we believe about the future affects our behavior and ideology in the present.

Make Money

The song continues: “Used to dream of outer space but now they’re laughing at our face, Saying, ‘wake up, you need to make money.’”

Once-happy dreams of the stellar future have become the drudgery of the mundane present. The song contains an underlying theme of resentment over having been conned. “I was told when I get older all my fears would shrink; but now I’m insecure and I care what people think.”

It is tempting to snap at this generational attitude with a bit of condescension. “oor, coddled babies; welcome to the real world!” And yet, this dismissal misses the mark. Millennials might be spoiled in ways no generation ever has been, and, yet, they are also the generation most misled and victimized by the civic pieties of their youth.

They once believed that there must be a point to  sitting for a decade and a half in classrooms, where they listen to “experts” and are judged mainly on their ability to comply with instructions. Surely the reward will come around someday. Yet after all this, it turns out that there is no real payoff. The market value of their work is assessed by an entirely different standard. The skill set demanded by the market is completely different from the one they developed in school.

The Appeal of Socialism

To understand this is to see why college students are drawn to the rhetoric and agenda of Bernie Sanders. He promises to wipe away their loans and make remaining college classes free. Then he provides a scapegoat for their economic fears by demonizing the millionaires and billionaires, as if to say “there’s the money; let’s go and get it.” It’s a campaign fueled by fear and rooted in envy, but it resonates with a generation that perceives itself to be snookered and victimized.

The critical questions: who is really to blame? What should be done about it? Here is where no one is telling the truth. The twentysomethings face bleak job prospects because they  lack real-world experience and have not built a robust network to tap for viable entry positions with a future. This dearth of opportunity  results from having been forcibly cloistered their whole lives, and sealed off from any remunerative work. This is what cultivates a mindset unprepared to deal with real-world work.

The high costs of college make it impossible to “work your way through school” as previous generations did. Labor regulation effectively outlaws young people from working in any case. And a sticky job market makes millennials an expensive risk for any employer.

This is not the fault of loan sharks or billionaires. It’s the fault of bad public policy: the creation of legal restrictions hampering young people from becoming acculturated to commercial life in an organic way. They aren’t allowed in, and by the time they are, they have developed other interests. Instead, they are tossed out into a cold, cruel world — about which they know nothing — at the old age of 22, equipped with nothing but paper entitlements bearing little  genuine market value.

The prolonged infantilization of millennials is underscored by the drinking-age laws: surely the least-obeyed laws in the country apart from speed limits. People underestimate the social signalling of such laws. Society tells young adults they can’t be trusted to have a beer or a glass of wine with dinner, and conveying the message that they are immature. They drink anyway, without social supervision, and do so in the most immature way imaginable.

Adulthood is delayed and delayed in the material world, even as it comes hard and fast in the digital world where age barely matters at all. They are at once the most educated and most technologically sophisticated generation as well as the most ignorant and naive  in terms of monetizing their knowledge in the real world. This has created dissonance in self-understanding among this generation. When they are finally free of school and its restrictions, prohibitions, and debilitations, they are sent out into an unfamiliar adult world, unsure whether they are young or old, and told to fend for themselves.

Would this lead to the onset of demoralization? Absolutely.

What should really stress them out is not work as such, but policies that have denied them an integrated life experience with hopeful forward motion. Government policies are a terrible replacement for mama’s song and for the security and comfort of childhood. The answer is not to return to the good ‘ol days, but progress toward a society of freedom and opportunity.

Jeffrey A. TuckerJeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Digital Development at FEE and CLO of the startup Liberty.me. Author of five books, and many thousands of articles, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.  Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook. Email.

Mainstream Media’s Dirty War on Trump

The more I listen to Donald Trump’s refrain about how dishonest the media is, the more I am beginning to agree with him.

The media should be thoroughly embarrassed by their coverage last week of North Carolina’s now infamous punch throwing incident at a Donald Trump rally.

Rakeem Jones was being led out of Trump’s rally by Cumberland County officers at Fayetteville’s Crown Coliseum for attempting to disrupt the event. As Jones was being led out, John McGraw sucker punched him in front of the police; but it was Jones who was thrust to the ground, handcuffed, and arrested. McGraw continued to watch the rally without so much as being questioned by the police.

That was the news story from this incident, not Trump being universally accused of stoking racial fears and violence.

Oh, did I mention to you that Jones is a 26 year-old Black man and McGraw is a 78 year-old White male? This had nothing to do with race. This was a plain old assault, pure and simple.

But, for the liberal, biased media, it was manna sent from heaven.

You had the perfect setting for liberals to do what they do best—use the race card.

The backdrop of the event taking place in North Carolina was part of the old Confederacy of the Deep South; you had a 26 year-old Black male; and a 78 year-old White male straight out of central casting for a KKK movie; and if that wasn’t enough, you had a bigger than life personality named Donald Trump running for president as a Republican.

For the liberal media, this was like winning the lottery. What are the odds of having all these dynamics converge together in one place?

In one event, the media continued their attempts to tarnish Trump, call all Republicans racists, make McGraw the face of the Republican Party; and give Black liberals another opportunity to blame Republicans for every problem the Black community faces (God forbid that they would actually blame Obama’s policies for some of these issues.).

Without question, Trump needs to tone down some of his rhetoric, but to blame him for McGraw’s actions is akin to blaming a rape victim for how she was dressed.

Trump is not and cannot be held responsible for the illegal actions of a 78 year-old man. Period.

If Trump was speaking to a group of teenagers, then I would be more inclined to accept his culpability in them engaging in some illegal activity. Teenagers, by their sheer lack of maturity, are impressionable and can easily be persuaded into acting irresponsibly and illegally, but I am not willing to be so understanding when it comes to adults.

The media has all but ignored the fact that Jones was assaulted right in front of several policemen and the perpetrator was allowed to remain free. Time after time we have seen a Black be the victim of a crime, but yet somehow the victim seems to be the one arrested and not the perpetrator.

In previous columns I have asked and I will continue to ask, what is happing in America that police continue to ignore crimes committed against Blacks even when they are witnesses to the crime?

There has been little discussion in the media as to why it took almost 24 hours before the Fayetteville police questioned and arrested McGraw.

But instead, the media used this occasion to continue their smear of Trump and all things Republican.
The media’s coverage of this event is bordering on journalistic malpractice. This is totally irresponsible and playing to the racial fears so prevalent in our country.

If you don’t agree with Donald Trump, then don’t go to his rallies. You have absolutely no constitutional right to attend someone’s rally with the sole intent to disrupt it.

The media has been derelict in its obligation to report the news accurately and impartially.

The media has refused to report the fact that radical liberal financier, George Soros, has given multiple millions of dollars to groups like MoveOn.org to disrupt Republican events.

MoveOn.Org orchestrated the disturbance at Trump’s rally last week in Chicago.

Why has the media not reported on this fact? The groups don’t even deny the fact that they are creating these protests in order to embarrass Trump with the full knowledge that the media is in the tank for them.

So, to the media and the all the political pundits out there blaming Trump for this supposed violence, I want you to also blame all the rapes against women on the fact that they wear short dresses or drank too much alcohol.

When you do this, then I will be the first one to criticize Trump on his hyperbolic language.

RELATED ARTICLE: Kasich co-chair on Trump: ‘You’ve got to take him out with a head shot’

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in Black Press USA. The featured image is courtesy of TPM.

The Dance of the Muslim Stoat

In a January 29, 2016 article for Frontpage Magazine, titled “The Hypnotic Dance of Death,” Russian expatriate Alexander Maistrovoy compares the hypnotic dance of a small Siberian carnivore to the “dance of death” that Islamists use to mesmerize western political leaders.

Maistrovoy describes a small Siberian animal, the stoat, which, although tiny by comparison to other animals, is quite adept at trapping and eating much larger and faster animals.  He tells us that the stoat doesn’t stalk its prey, it doesn’t sit in ambush, and it doesn’t catch its prey on the run.  Instead, it performs a hypnotic dance of death in front of a rabbit or hare with “wriggles, acrobatic leaps and somersaults.”  The stoat dazzles its prey with its dance before gradually approaching it and sinking its teeth deep into its throat.

Maistrovoy asks, rhetorically, why the larger animals allow themselves to be bedazzled by the stoat’s deadly dance, a phenomenon that biologists are unable to explain.  He compares it to the inability of sociologists or anthropologists to explain why it is that western political leaders seem unable to recognize the obvious danger that Islam represents for all non-Muslims.  He notes that, “Western elites have foredoomed their own people by means of somersaults and acrobatic tricks, and doomed them to the same fate of the unfortunate rabbit… ”

A December 17, 2015, letter from Senator James Lankford, Oklahoma’s first-term junior senator, is a perfect example of the head-in-the sand attitude of western political leaders.  In response to my earlier letter, in which I requested a direct response from the senator, himself, as opposed to a generic staff-generated “Dear Constituent” response, Lankford began by thanking me for contacting him with my concerns about Islamic immigration.  Then he went on to explain that, “The First Amendment to the Constitution protects the right of all Americans to practice the religion they choose, or no religion, without fear of government interference or retribution.  He explained, “As a man of faith, I believe each American has the right to choose his or her own belief system.  While I do not practice the Muslim faith, I do not believe it is criminal or subversive to simply be a Muslim.”

He goes on to say, “Religious liberty is vital to a free nation.  The First Amendment to the Constitution states, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’  Disruption of religious liberty for one person endangers the liberties of us all.”

What the senator is suggesting, without actually putting it into words, is that all non-Muslim Americans should engage in a suicide pact.  What he fails to recognize is that Islam is not a religion, subject to First Amendment protections, as we in western cultures understand the term.  Rather, it is a complete political, legal, economic, military, social, and cultural entity, posing as a religion.  Wherever we find them, its adherents refuse to assimilate into host country cultures, insisting that they be allowed to exist as a separate and distinct culture, not subject to the laws of their host countries.  In order to accomplish their ends, they rely on anti-western directives of the Quran to preach the overthrow of their host governments, by force and violence if necessary.

The senator is apparently unaware that our country has always taken steps to protect itself from domination by foreign ideologies.  For example, in reaction to the Communist threat of the Cold War era, the U.S. Congress passed and President Eisenhower signed the Communist Control Act of 1954.  Section 2 of the Act reads, in part, as follows:

“The Congress hereby finds and declares that the Communist Party of the United States, although purportedly a political party, is in fact an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the United States… The peril inherent in its operation arises not from its numbers, but from its failure to acknowledge any limitation as to the nature of its activities, and its dedication to the proposition that the present constitutional Government of the United States ultimately must be brought to ruin by any available means, including resort to force and violence.  Holding that doctrine, its role as the agency of a hostile foreign power renders its existence a clear, present, and continuing danger to the security of the United States…”

Under Section 3 of the Act, the Congress unequivocally stripped the Communist Party of any and all constitutional protections.   Section 3 reads as follows:

“The Communist Party of the United States, or any successors of such party, regardless of the assumed name, whose object or purpose is to overthrow the Government of the United States, or the government of any State, Territory, District, or possession thereof… by force and violence, are not entitled to any of the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies created under the jurisdiction of the laws of the United States or any political subdivision thereof; and whatever rights, privileges, and immunities which have heretofore been granted to said party or any subsidiary organization by reason of the laws of the United States or any political subdivision thereof, are hereby terminated…” 

Is there any plausible reason why we should respond any differently to Islam and its radical adherents? 

Donald Trump has suggested that the United States call at least a temporary halt to all Muslim immigration until our Homeland Security officials have developed processes to adequately vet the flow of Muslim migrants.  The reaction to his suggestion was swift and predictable.  Liberals, Democrats, and members of the mainstream media were quick to denounce him, while members of his own party called upon him to withdraw from the Republican presidential primaries.  House Speaker Paul Ryan took the unusual step of denouncing Trump, saying, “Normally, I do not comment on what’s going on in the presidential election.  I will take an exception today.  This is not conservatism.  What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for and, more importantly, it is not what this country stands for.”  So how will Senator Lankford and Speaker Ryan react when polls show that the people they represent overwhelmingly agree with Trump?  They fail to acknowledge that most Americans do not want Muslims living next door to them, nor do they want to increase our existing Muslim population.

One would think that members of Congress would have at least a minimal understanding of current immigration law.  For example, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, Public Law 82-414 (the McCarran-Walter Act), Section 212(a), enacted two years prior to the Communist Control Act of 1954, provides no less than 31 criteria under which “classes of aliens shall be ineligible to receive visas and shall be excluded from admission into the United States.”

Included among these, Section 212(a)(19) bars entry to “any alien who seeks to procure, or has sought to procure, or has procured a visa or other documentation, or seeks to enter the United States by fraud, or by willfully misrepresenting a material fact.”  Can all of the “refugees” now seeking asylum in the U.S. provide indisputable evidence that all of the information they have provided is factual and verifiable?  Section 212(a)(27) bars all aliens “who the consular officer or the Attorney General knows, or has reason to believe, seek to enter the United States solely, principally, or incidentally, to engage in activities which would be prejudicial to the public interest, or endanger the welfare, safety, or security of the United States.”

Section 212(a)(28) of the Act denies access to all aliens “who are anarchists, or who have at any time been members of or affiliated with any organization (such as Islam) that advocates or teaches the overthrow of the government of the United States by force, violence, or other unconstitutional means.”  This is precisely what Donald Trump has suggested, and it is precisely this law that Jimmy Carter cited in his Executive Order of April 7, 1980, in which he invalidated the visas of all Iranians in the country and prohibited the issuance of new visas to Iranians for the duration of the Iranian hostage crisis.

Islam is the only “religious” movement on Earth that proposes to extend its dominion to every corner of the Earth by rape, murder, terror, and oppression.  And since the 95% of Muslims who are described as either “moderate” or “un-radicalized” appear unwilling to play an active role in keeping their radicalized brethren in check, we have no long term alternative but to quarantine them… prohibiting them from residing anywhere among the civilized nations of the Earth.

In early September 2015, hundreds of Muslims rioted in the streets of Sidney, Australia, apparently in response to an anti-Islamic film.  As wounded police officers were dragged to safety ahead of the advancing mob, the jihadists chanted, “Obama, Obama!  We love Obama!”

Yes, they love Obama and it’s pretty clear by now that he loves them.  He is the closest thing we have to an Islamic “stoat” who has mesmerized our political leaders, Republicans and Democrats alike, into believing that we have little to fear from Muslim immigration.  That simply is not the case.  Our political leaders live each day inside protective cocoons, safe from the bloodlust of the Muslim muhajirs, whose sole purpose in life is to impose their brutal 7th century culture on 21st century Judeo-Christian nations.  And since our political leaders appear unwilling to do what is necessary to protect us, we will ultimately find ourselves taking matters into our own hands.

On September 12, 1683, the greatest Muslim assault on the Christian world was halted at the gates of Vienna by the combined forces of the Germans, the Poles, and the Lithuanians.  Now, in the early years of the 21st century, the German government and other European governments have capitulated and the gates of Vienna have finally been breached.  And unless we defeat them in the deserts of the Middle East and in the streets of Europe in the months and years ahead, they will surely confront us at the Statue of Liberty, the Washington Monument. And in the streets of America.  If that comes to pass, western civilization will be lost forever.

Associated Press ‘corrects’ Trump for saying Islam treats women badly

The Qur’an likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: “Your women are a tilth for you, so go to your tilth as you will” (2:223).

It declares that a woman’s testimony is worth half that of a man: “Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as you choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her” (2:282).

It allows men to marry up to four wives, and have sex with slave girls also: “If you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if you fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly, then only one, or one that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice” (4:3).

It rules that a son’s inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter: “Allah directs you as regards your children’s inheritance: to the male, a portion equal to that of two females” (4:11).

Worst of all, the Qur’an tells husbands to beat their disobedient wives: “Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property. So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah has guarded. As for those from whom you fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them” (4:34).

It allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures “shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (65:4).

Islamic law stipulates that a man’s prayer is annulled if a dog or a woman passes in front of him as he is praying. “Narrated ‘Aisha: The things which annul the prayers were mentioned before me. They said, “Prayer is annulled by a dog, a donkey and a woman (if they pass in front of the praying people).” I said, ‘You have made us (i.e. women) dogs.’ I saw the Prophet praying while I used to lie in my bed between him and the Qibla. Whenever I was in need of something, I would slip away. for I disliked to face him.” (Sahih Bukhari 1.9.490)

Woodward_ Cal

Calvin Woodward

“AP ‘Corrects’ Trump For Saying Islam Treats Women Badly,” by Blake Neff, Daily Caller, March 12, 2016 (thanks to Thomas):

The Associated Press published a “fact check” of Donald Trump’s claim during Thursday’s GOP debate that “Islam treats women horribly,” saying it is untrue, even though there is ample evidence for such a statement.

“No such generalization is supported by the diverse circumstances for women in the Muslim world,” writes the AP’s Calvin Woodward.

Woodward backs up his argument with several statements.

“The United States has yet to see a woman as president, many years after Muslim women achieved national leadership in other countries, most prominently Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto back in the late 1980s and in the 1990s,” he says, glossing over the fact Bhutto was assassinated in 2007, and that her rise was enabled by the fact she was in an extremely powerful political dynasty.

Woodward also dismisses other ways Islamic doctrine leads to women being legally or socially limited, arguing that many women prefer it that way.

“Some Muslim societies are indeed repressive by Western standards, enforcing or pressing for norms such as clothing that covers all but their eyes or faces; bans on driving, voting and education; and restrictions on interacting with the other sex,” he writes. “But many Muslim women adhere to Islamic norms not out of fear or repression, but in observance of faith and their own preference.”…

a 2012 report by the World Economic Forum ranked 135 countries based on their level of gender equality — measured by women’s level of education, political empowerment, health and economic opportunity. Of the 135 countries on the list, the most highly-ranked one with a Muslim majority was Kyrgyzstan at 35th. Fifteen of the bottom 20 countries are Muslim, while three more have large Muslim minorities.

Several of the world’s most severe violations of women’s rights are most common in Islamic countries. For example, the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM) is seen most often in the Islamic world, as the practice occurs frequently in central Africa, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen and Indonesia. Most Muslim countries allow men, but not women, to practice polygamy. Child marriage is a major issue in several Muslim countries because Islam generally allows women to be married off at a very young age. In Pakistan, an effort to ban child marriage was blocked after clerics declared it un-Islamic.

There are many ways in which women are treated as inferior to men under Islamic law (Sharia). In many Muslim countries, a woman’s testimony is treated as one-half of a man’s testimony in certain trials. Women may initiate divorce in Islam, but are at a disadvantage relative to men. When women are murdered or are otherwise the victims of crime, Islamic jurisprudence holds that less blood money be paid out than in the case of a man. Women may collect inheritances, but in most cases their share is half that of men’s….

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Robert Spencer in PJ Media: New York Times Portrays Islam More Negatively Than Cancer, Study Claims

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is for illustration only. To view graphic images of Muslim women battered under Islamic shariah laws click here. Many Muslim and non-Muslim women are subjected to sexual jihad. Sexual jihad (Arabic: جهاد النكاح‎, jihad al-nikah) is the practice of women within some Wahhabist groups who are allegedly voluntarily offering themselves in sexual comfort roles to men fighting for the establishment of Islamic rule.

PODCAST: USA Transnational Report — Guest Dr. Rich Swier

Rich is a 23-year Army veteran who retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in 1990. He was awarded the Legion of Merit for his years of service. Additionally, he was awarded two Bronze Stars with “V” for Heroism in ground combat, the Presidential Unit Citation, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry while serving with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam.

Visit his website here: www.DrRichSwier.com.

Topics of Discussion:

  • Europe’s new Right Wing Approach – The way of the future?
  • RIP Nancy Reagan
  • ISIS Membership Cache Discovered
  • Trump Chicago Rally Protest & Update on 2016 Primaries
  • Netanyahu Says NO! to Obama Meeting

RELATED ARTICLE: ICE: 124 illegal immigrants released from jail later charged in 138 murder cases

Voting Trump the end of intercourse? Hookers for Hillary and erectile dysfunction drug makers react!

The pharmaceutical industry is in a panic because of the Vote Trump, Get Dumped movement. According to PR Newswire:

In the wake of National Women’s Day, a grassroots movement of women (and supporting men) are refusing sex to anyone supporting Donald TrumpVote Trump, Get Dumped. Click here to see the petition and social media frenzy.

“It’s 4 years of Trump, or 4 years of sex. To cast a vote for Trump is to agree with his sexist, perverted, demeaning, backwards, offensive treatment of women,” said co-creator of the movement, Chandler Smith.

Why you ask? They believe Donald Trump is a sexist who doesn’t respect women. Of course he’s not politically correct. But for them, it’s actually about a lot more than that. It’s a question of what this indicates about his suitability to govern. Do we really want this man to represent us to the rest of the world? Is Donald Trump really who we are?

pfizer logoPfizer, the manufacturer of Viagra released the following statement:

Pfizer employs tens of thousands of loyal Americans. Our Viagra product has put a smile on many faces, both male and female. Therefore we have decided to provide Viagra for free to those who vote for Donald Trump for president. This offer is good until November 8th, 2016.

We believe that the Vote Trump, Get Dumped movement will satisfy no one, no pun intended.

For those wishing to live a chaste life perhaps they should enter a seminary or become a nun.

Warning: For those using Viagra who have an erection lasting more than four hours should contact their significant other  immediately for relief.

The maker of the erectile dysfunction drug Cialis wants its pill given to men who vote for the Donald. Eli Lilly and Company and French drug maker Sanofi, in a short press release notes, “We have joined forces with Pfizer to bring greater pleasure to those who suffer from erectile dysfunction. It may be that the Vote Trump, Get Dumped movement members are dysfunctional, no pun intended.”

Planned Parenthood, which provides contraception devices, is concerned that its birth control programs and federal funding will end as well. Cecile Richards, American activist and president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America when asked by a reporter noted:

We have been providing contraception devices to under-aged children for decades and selling the body part of the unborn. While we respect the women and men who are part of Vote Trump, Get Dumped, we cannot support their effort to end sex as we know it.

Sex is how we make our money. What will happen to our efforts to promote sex if everyone becomes chaste?

hookers16n-2-webHookers for Hillary are outraged at the Vote Trump, Get Dumped grassroots movement. Brothel owner Dennis Hof and the working girls at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch in a joint statement noted:

While we support Hillary Clinton for president, we believe that the Vote Trump, Get Dumped movement is ill conceived and will harm our clientele.

The majority of our clients are Republicans who will vote for their GOP nominee. If that is Trump, so be it.

Sex should not be used as a political weapon!

While sex and politics go together like apple pie and ice cream, to end sex as we know it would be a travesty. Vote Trump, Get Dumped harms both our johns and Moonlite Bunny Ranch employees from making a living wage.

Intercourse is the great pleasure of the American working class. Take sex away and America will be even more frustrated than it currently is with what is happening in Washington, D.C.

Bill Clinton was asked to comment on the Vote Trump,Get Dumped movement, stated, “I’m voting for Hillary.”

“Look at that face. Would anybody vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?! I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?” — said Trump in Rolling Stone referring to Hillary Clinton. Bill Clinton responded, “No comment!”

EDITORS NOTE: This political satire originally appeared in Hustler, Playboy and the Islamic State magazine Dabiq – Issue 69.

Dear Presidential Candidates: The National Debt is your Running Mate

WASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — With voters going to the polls in several key primary and caucus states on March 15, The Concord Coalition reminded all candidates today that regardless of party affiliation or ideology the rising national debt will affect the feasibility of their policy proposals.

“The debt is your running mate,” said Concord Co-Chairs Bob Kerrey (D-NE) and Jack Danforth (R-MO) former U.S. senators, and John Tanner (D-TN) and Mike Castle (R-DE), former U.S. House of Representatives members.

Their full statement.

Our nation’s budget policies simply don’t add up. And judging by what the leading 2016 presidential candidates are promising on the campaign trail, this sobering fact has not sunk in.

Republicans are proposing major tax cuts and higher defense spending. Their proposed spending cuts are nowhere near as large or specific. Democrats are proposing an array of expanded domestic programs that even if paid for with higher taxes would leave large and growing deficits.

This may seem like good campaign rhetoric, but it calls for a hard reality check. Whoever is elected president in 2016 will face a deep fiscal hole.

Failure by the new president and the next Congress to take quick and effective action on this fundamental problem could hurt the economy, lower American living standards, strangle investments on national priorities like infrastructure and medical research, leave critical entitlement programs on unsustainable paths, and put our position of global leadership at risk.

Even more shameful, we would be passing on the unfair burden of an enormous government debt to our children, grandchildren and future generations.

Projections by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), based on current law, demonstrate that the government is in an increasingly difficult position:

  • The budget deficit is projected to begin rising this year reaching $1 trillion (4.4 percent of GDP) by 2022 at the end of the next president’s first term.
  • Debt held by the public is projected to grow from 76 percent of GDP this year to 86 percent over the coming decade, far above the 39 percent average for the past half-century.
  • According to CBO, “Beyond the coming decade, the fiscal outlook is significantly more worrisome,” with debt rising further to 155 percent of GDP by 2046.

Population aging and rising health care costs mean that spending growth on the major entitlement programs is outpacing revenue growth, squeezing out other programs and adding to the debt. Under current law:

  • The CBO projects that most of the spending growth over the next 10 years will be driven by major health care programs (32 percent of the increase), Social Security (28 percent of the increase), and interest on the debt (23 percent of the increase).
  • Mandatory spending — which grows on autopilot and includes the major entitlement programs — along with interest on the debt will consume 99 percent of all revenues by 2026.
  • The projected rise in interest payments on the debt, from $255 billion in 2016 to $830 billion in 2026, is attributable to growing government borrowing and interest rates gradually increasing to more typical levels.
  • Social Security and Medicare continue to pay out more than they take in from their designated revenues, putting a growing strain on general revenues. The programs’ trustees warn that, “Social Security as a whole as well as Medicare cannot sustain projected long-run program costs under currently scheduled financing.”

Owing in large part to tight caps agreed to in the Budget Control Act of 2011, discretionary spending — which includes defense, education, transportation, justice, environment and certain veterans’ benefits – will actuallydecline from 6.5 percent of GDP in 2016 to 5.2 percent in 2026. By that year, discretionary spending and the deficit will both amount to roughly $1.4 trillion.

That means that cutting “waste, fraud and abuse,” as so many candidates advocate, is not the answer; Congress would have to eliminate all discretionary spending to balance the budget that year (assuming there were no entitlement cuts or tax increases).

The next President and Congress will not have the luxury of putting off the hard choices. Voters must ask some tough questions about the totality of the candidates’ fiscal plans and whether they add up. Candidates must do more than rail against the debt; they must give voters credible plans to rein it in and put the country’s finances on a sustainable path.

So our message to the candidates is this: The debt is your running mate. It will be there when this year’s winning candidate takes the Oath of Office. Your campaign promises need to reflect that reality. So far, they don’t.

ABOUT THE CONCORD COALITION

The Concord Coalition is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to fiscal responsibility. Since 1992, Concord has worked to educate the public about the causes and consequences of the federal deficit and debt, and to develop realistic solutions for sustainable budgets. For more fiscal news and analysis, visit concordcoalition.org and follow us on Twitter: @ConcordC

Why Bernie Sanders [and Donald Trump] Matter

why bernie sanders matters book coverWASHINGTON, D.C. /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Bernie Sanders’ appeal to young, often first time voters, is not a mystery to Harry Jaffe, whose recent book “Why Bernie Sanders Matters” was the subject of a Focus Washington interview with Chuck Conconi. Jaffe said the youthful voters are “attracted to” the VermontSenator’s authenticity.

In that, Jaffe explained, Sanders has “a commonality with (Donald) Trump” in that neither are part of the establishment. The comparison between the two maverick candidates, however, Jaffe points out is that Sanders is a “Populist Socialist,” while Trump is “Populist Fascist.”

In a comparison with the campaign style of Hillary Clinton, with whom he is vying for the Democratic Party nomination to run for president, Jaffe said Sanders says what he thinks and if you don’t agree with it, don’t vote for him. Clinton, on the other hand, he continues, first factors what her handlers think, then what her husband, former President Bill Clinton, thinks and then what she thinks before making a statement. Jaffe said younger voters can detect that difference.

Jaffe also said that the black vote is not monolithic and that southern African Americans — largely rural, more religious and conservative — are quite different from their northern counterparts, who are urban and prioritize good jobs and making a living. The contention is that while Clinton runs exceptionally well with African Americans in the southern states, she might not do as well among northern blacks in the upcoming Ohio and Illinois primaries.

A Washington Magazine editor at large, Jaffe, who has worked on books by educator Michele Rhee and former congresswoman Gabby Gifford, said that pollsters and much of the media were surprised by Sanders upset victory in the Michigan primary. Jaffe said he wasn’t surprised and doesn’t think Sanders was surprised either. He contends that Sanders will also do well in the upcoming Ohio and Illinois primaries because Sanders, who consistently votes against international trade agreements, has always been a spokesman for the working class who see their jobs outsourced overseas, and that they are not getting paid as well as they once were. They like his opposition to trade agreements, a factor that political pundits said was a major part of his Michigan victory.

Harry Jaffe provides interesting insights on democratic voters, upcoming primaries and even some surprises about the candidate himself as a college student during the 1960s. Bernie Sanders champions voters who feel like they don’t matter in Washington; and because he lets them know that they do matter, Bernie Sanders’Presidential bid matters.

See the full interview: http://www.focuswashington.com/2016/03/11/why-bernie-sanders-matters/

To learn more about the author, see his website at: http://www.harryjaffe.com/

About MSLGROUP

MSLGROUP is Publicis Groupe’s strategic communications and engagement group, advisors in all aspects of communication strategy: from consumer PR to financial communications, from public affairs to reputation management and from crisis communications to experiential marketing and events. With more than 3,000 people across close to 100 offices worldwide, MSLGROUP is also the largest PR network in Europe, fast-growing China and India. The group offers strategic planning and counsel, insight-guided thinking and big, compelling ideas – followed by thorough execution.
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About Publicis Groupe

Publicis Groupe [Euronext Paris FR0000130577, CAC 40] is a global leader in marketing, communication, and business transformation. In a world marked by increased convergence and consumer empowerment, Publicis Groupe offers a full range of services and skills: digital, technology & consulting with Publicis.Sapient (SapientNitro, Sapient Global Markets, Sapient Government Services, Razorfish Global, DigitasLBi, Rosetta) – the world’s largest most forward-thinking digitally centered platform focused exclusively on digital transformation in an always-on world – as well as creative networks such as BBH, Leo Burnett, Publicis Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi, public affairs, corporate communications and events with MSLGROUP, ad tech solutions with VivaKi, media strategy, planning and buying through Starcom MediaVest Group and ZenithOptimedia, healthcare communications, with Publicis Healthcare Communications Group (PHCG), and finally, brand asset production with Prodigious. Present in 108 countries, the Groupe employs more than 76,000 professionals.

Will America Ever Have A ‘Wise And Frugal Government’ Again

Sometimes it is said that a man cannot be trusted with the government of himself.  Can he then be trusted with the government of others?  Recent history has proven that to be very true.  No one of with any measure of moral conscience will deny the recent history of government being shepherded toward oblivion by proponents of evil.  ­I hate to bring it up, but the Obama administration is perhaps the premier example of a man that cannot be trusted and should not be have been granted the privilege of governing our republic.  But unfortunately therein lies another problem that must be addressed as we engage perhaps the most important election in our nation’s history.

As “We the People” prepare to choose who will lead our republic, perhaps we should take a closer look at ourselves and refine our vision of what kind of America do we want going forward.  To aid in our search let us consider what do we want to leave for our children.  History will answer that question loud and clear with the results of our decisions.  If we do not reconnect with the Christian based values that were the foundational building blocks of our America we shall witness the completion of the destructive mission of the progressive enemies from within our population ranks.  Let us as Americans with courage and confidence pursue our own federal and republican principles.

As part of his 1801 Inaugural address, President Thomas Jefferson stated: Enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter.  With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? (I couldn’t help but pause here and ask this question.  Have you noticed how the further Americans are indoctrinated against the principles and beliefs that made the United States the  envy of the world, she is actually both less happy and prosperous?)

Still one thing more, fellow citizens—a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned…You should understand what I deem the essential principles of our government…. Equal and exact justice to all men, of, whatever state or persuasion, religious or political…the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of a person under the protection of the habeas corpus and trial by jury impartially selected…

Unfortunately, our nation has succumbed to the lowest common denominator when it comes to morality, government function, individual liberties, as well as the economy and other relevant concerns.

If our republic is to reemerge as a beacon of light and liberty, to the teeming masses that would want to come to America legally to become Americans, our nation will first have to return to being the actual America that good and decent people around the world would want to be a part of.  Think about it, as our nation has become increasingly immoral, she has also degenerated from a land of liberty into a semi big government police state over every aspect of our lives.  In other words, the government takes over a people that don’t use self-control.

Without any effort, immorality replaces under utilized or untaught morality.  That is why the immoral from around the world are the majority of individuals now filing illegally into our nation with the permission of a corrupt government that appeases our enemies who want to come in and wreak havoc at taxpayer expense, just to add insult to injury.  That is why the Obama administration was ready to take Arizona to court and put a hurting on Texas for daring to protect the border with Mexico since the immoral federal government has gone loco.

Despite all of the negative developments over the past several decades that have culminated in the worst administration in our nation’s history and could potentially harm our nation beyond repair.  (After all, Obama did say he wanted to fundamentally change America.)  Obviously, his interpretation of changes could not have even been enacted before the turn of the century.  I believe that I have witnessed the real beginning of renewal in our country.  Many people of faith are finally becoming interested enough to learn about and care what happens to the United States of America.  Remember, it was an active, brave and intelligent church that was an integral part of the fight for independence and later against slavery.

Remembering the wise words of orator, author statesman, and abolitionist Frederick Douglas: The Declaration of Independence is the ringbolt to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it.  The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles.  Stand by them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and whatever cost.  I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Douglas.  America, if you are to be great again, you must first seek to be good, for it is then you shall make better decisions and take right actions that will recalibrate our destiny from utter disaster to undeniable recovery and greatness.

The Economic Policy of the Nazis by Ludwig von Mises

The doctrines of Nazism swept the developed world long before the Nazis took power.

[Excerpt from Omnipotent Government: The Rise of Total State and Total War (1944), chapter 7]

Hitler and his clique conquered Germany by brutal violence, by murder and crime. But the doctrines of Nazism had got hold of the German mind long before then. Persuasion, not violence, had converted the immense majority of the nation to the tenets of militant nationalism.

If Hitler had not succeeded in winning the race for dictatorship, somebody else would have won it. There were plenty of candidates whom he had to eclipse: Kapp, General Ludendorff, Captain Ehrhardt, Major Papst, Forstrat Escherich, Strasser, and many more. Hitler had no inhibitions and thus he defeated his better instructed or more scrupulous competitors.

Nazism conquered Germany because it never encountered any adequate intellectual resistance. It would have conquered the whole world if, after the fall of France, Great Britain and the United States had not begun to fight it seriously.

The contemporary criticism of the Nazi program failed to serve the purpose. People were busy dealing with the mere accessories of the Nazi doctrine. They never entered into a full discussion of the essence of National Socialist teachings. The reason is obvious. The fundamental tenets of the Nazi ideology do not differ from the generally accepted social and economic ideologies. The difference concerns only the application of these ideologies to the special problems of Germany.

These are the dogmas of present-day “unorthodox” orthodoxy:

  1. Capitalism is an unfair system of exploitation. It injures the immense majority for the benefit of a small minority. Private ownership of the means of production hinders the full utilization of natural resources and of technical improvements. Profits and interest are tributes which the masses are forced to pay to a class of idle parasites. Capitalism is the cause of poverty and must result in war.
  2. It is therefore the foremost duty of popular government to substitute government control of business for the management of capitalists and entrepreneurs.
  3. Price ceilings and minimum wage rates, whether directly enforced by the administration or indirectly by giving a free hand to trade-unions, are an adequate means for improving the lot of the consumers and permanently raising the standard of living of all wage earners. They are steps on the way toward entirely emancipating the masses (by the final establishment of socialism) from the yoke of capital. (We may note incidentally that Marx in his later years violently opposed these propositions. Present-day Marxism, however, endorses them fully.)
  4. Easy money policy, i.e., credit expansion, is a useful method of lightening the burdens imposed by capital upon the masses and making a country more prosperous. It has nothing to do with the periodical recurrence of economic depression. Economic crises are an evil inherent in unhampered capitalism.
  5. All those who deny the foregoing statements and assert that capitalism best serves the masses and that the only effective method of permanently improving the economic conditions of all strata of society is progressive accumulation of new capital are ill-intentioned and narrow-minded apologists of the selfish class interests of the exploiters. A return to laissez faire, free trade, the gold standard, and economic freedom is out of the question. Mankind will fortunately never go back to the ideas and policies of the nineteenth century and the Victorian age. (Let us note incidentally that both both Marxism and trade-unionism have the fairest claim to the epithets “nineteenth-century” and “Victorian.”)
  6. The advantage derived from foreign trade lies exclusively in exporting. Imports are bad and should be prevented as much as possible. The happiest situation in which a nation can find itself is where it need not depend on any imports from abroad. (The “progressives,” it is true, are not enthusiastic about this dogma and sometimes even reject it as a nationalist error; however, their political acts are thoroughly dictated by it.)

With regard to these dogmas there is no difference between present-day British liberals and the British labor party on the one hand and the Nazis on the other. It does not matter that the British call these principles an outgrowth of liberalism and economic democracy while the Germans, on better grounds, call them antiliberal and antidemocratic. It is not much more important that in Germany nobody is free to utter dissenting views, while in Great Britain a dissenter is only laughed at as a fool and slighted.

We do not need to deal here with the refutation of the fallacies in these six dogmas. This is the task of treatises expounding the basic problems of economic theory. It is a task that has already been fulfilled. We need only emphasize that whoever lacks the courage or the insight to attack these premises is not in a position to find fault with the conclusions drawn from them by the Nazis.

The Nazis also desire government control of business. They also seek autarky for their own nation. The distinctive mark of their policies is that they refuse to acquiesce in the disadvantages which the acceptance of the same system by other nations would impose upon them. They are not prepared to be forever “imprisoned,” as they say, within a comparatively overpopulated area in which the productivity of labor is lower than in other countries.

Both the German and foreign adversaries of Nazism were defeated in the intellectual battle against it because they were enmeshed in the same intransigent and intolerant dogmatism. The British Left and the American progressives want all-round control of business for their own countries. They admire the Soviet methods of economic management.

In rejecting German totalitarianism they contradict themselves. The German intellectuals saw in Great Britain’s abandonment of free trade and of the gold standard a proof of the superiority of German doctrines and methods. Now they see that the Anglo-Saxons imitate their own system of economic management in nearly every respect. They hear eminent citizens of these countries declare that their nations will cling to these policies in the postwar period. Why should not the Nazis be convinced, in the face of all this, that they were the pioneers of a new and better economic and social order?

The chiefs of the Nazi party and their Storm Troopers are sadistic gangsters. But the German intellectuals and German labor tolerated their rule because they agreed with the basic social, economic, and political doctrines of Nazism. Whoever wanted to fight Nazism as such, before the outbreak of the present war and in order to avoid it (and not merely to oust the scum which happens to hold office in present-day Germany), would have had to change the minds of the German people. This was beyond the power of the supporters of etatism.

It is useless to search the Nazi doctrines for contradictions and inconsistencies. They are indeed self-contradictory and inconsistent; but their basic faults are those common to all brands of present-day etatism.

One of the most common objections raised against the Nazis concerned the alleged inconsistency of their population policy. It is contradictory, people used to say, to complain, on the one hand, of the comparative overpopulation of Germany and ask for more Lebensraum and to try, on the other hand, to increase the birth rate. Yet there was in the eyes of the Nazis no inconsistency in these attitudes. The only remedy for the evil of overpopulation that they knew was provided by the fact that the Germans were numerous enough to wage a war for more space, while the small nations laboring under the same evil of comparative overpopulation were too weak to save themselves. The more soldiers Germany could levy, the easier it would be to free the nation from the curse of overpopulation. The underlying doctrine was faulty; but one who did not attack the whole doctrine could not convincingly find fault with the endeavors to rear as much cannon fodder as possible.

One reason why the objections raised to the despotism of the Nazis and the atrocities they committed had so little effect is that many of the critics themselves were inclined to excuse the Soviet methods. Hence the German nationalists could claim that their adversaries—both German and foreign—were being unfair to the Nazis in denouncing them for practices which they judged more mildly in the Russians. And they called it cant and hypocrisy when the Anglo-Saxons attacked their racial doctrines. Do the British and the Americans themselves, they retorted, observe the principle of equality of all races?

The foreign critics condemn the Nazi system as capitalist. In this age of fanatical anticapitalism and enthusiastic support of socialism no reproach seems to discredit a government more thoroughly in the eyes of fashionable opinion than the qualification pro-capitalistic. But this is one charge against the Nazis that is unfounded. We have seen in a previous chapter that the Zwangswirtschaft is a socialist system of all-round government control of business.

It is true that there are still profits in Germany. Some enterprises even make much higher profits than in the last years of the Weimar regime. But the significance of this fact is quite different from what the critics believe. There is strict control of private spending.

No German capitalist or entrepreneur (shop manager) or any one else is free to spend money on his consumption than the government considers adequate to his rank and position in the service of the nation. The surplus must be deposited with the banks or invested in domestic bonds or in the stock of German corporations wholly controlled by the government.

Hoarding of money or banknotes is strictly forbidden and punished as high treason. Even before the war there were no imports of luxury goods from abroad, and their domestic production has long since been discontinued. Nobody is free to buy more food and clothing than the allotted ration. Rents are frozen; furniture and all other goods are unattainable.

Travel abroad is permitted only on government errands. Until a short time ago a limited amount of foreign exchange was allotted to tourists who wanted to spend a holiday in Switzerland or Italy. The Nazi government was anxious not to arouse the anger of its then Italian friends by preventing its citizens from visiting Italy.

The case with Switzerland was different. The Swiss Government, yielding to the demands of one of the most important branches of its economic system, insisted that a part of the payment for German exports to Switzerland should be balanced by the outlays of German tourists. As the total amount of German exports to Switzerland and of Swiss exports to Germany was fixed by a bilateral exchange agreement, it was of no concern to Germany how the Swiss distributed the surplus. The sum allotted to German tourists traveling in Switzerland was deducted from that destined for the repayment of German debts to Swiss banks. Thus the stockholders of the Swiss banks paid the expenses incurred by German tourists.

German corporations are not free to distribute their profits to the shareholders. The amount of the dividends is strictly limited according to a highly complicated legal technique. It has been asserted that this does not constitute a serious check, as the corporations are free to water the stock. This is an error. They are free to increase their nominal stock only out of profits made and declared and taxed as such in previous years but not distributed to the shareholders.

As all private consumption is strictly limited and controlled by the government, and as all unconsumed income must be invested, which means virtually lent to the government, high profits are nothing but a subtle method of taxation.

The consumer has to pay high prices and business is nominally profitable. But the greater the profits are, the more the government funds are swelled. The government gets the money either as taxes or as loans. And everybody must be aware that these loans will one day be repudiated.

For many years German business has not been in a position to replace its equipment. At the end of the war the assets of corporations and private firms will consist mainly of worn-out machinery and various doubtful claims against the government. Warring Germany lives on its capital stock, i.e., on the capital nominally and seemingly owned by its capitalists.

The Nazis interpret the attitudes of other nations with regard to the problem of raw materials as an acknowledgment of the fairness of their own claims. The League of Nations has established that the present state of affairs is unsatisfactory and hurts the interests of those nations calling themselves have-nots.

The fourth point of the Atlantic Declaration of August 14, 1941, in which the chiefs of the governments of the United Kingdom and of the United States made known “certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hope for a better future of the world,” reads as follows: “They will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment by all States, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity.”

The Roman Catholic Church is, in a world war, above the fighting parties. There are Catholics in both camps. The Pope is in a position to view the conflict with impartiality. It was, therefore, in the eyes of the Nazis very significant when the Pope discovered the root causes of the war in “that cold and calculating egoism which tends to hoard the economic resources and materials destined for the use of all to such an extent that the nations less favored by nature are not permitted access to them,” and further declared that he saw “admitted the necessity of a participation of all in the natural riches of the earth even on the part of those nations which in the fulfillment of this principle belong to the category of givers and not to that of receivers.”

Well, say the Nazis, everybody admits that our grievances are reasonable. And, they add, in this world which seeks autarky of totalitarian nations, the only way to redress them is to redistribute territorial sovereignty. It was often contended that the dangers of autarky which the Nazis feared were still far away, that Germany could still expand its export trade, and that its per capita income continued to increase. Such objections did not impress the Germans. They wanted to realize economic equality, i.e., a productivity of German labor as high as that of any other nation.

The wage earners of the Anglo-Saxon countries too, they objected, enjoy today a much higher standard of living than in the past. Nevertheless, the “progressives” do not consider this fact a justification of capitalism, but approve of labor’s claims for higher wages and the abolition of the wages system. It is unfair, said the Nazis, to object to the German claims when nobody objects to those of Anglo-Saxon labor.

The weakest argument brought forward against the Nazi doctrine was the pacifist slogan: War does not settle anything. For it cannot be denied that the present state of territorial sovereignty and political organization is the outcome of wars fought in the past. The sword freed France from the rule of the English kings and made it an independent nation, converted America and Australia into white men’s countries, and secured the autonomy of the American republics. Bloody battles made France and Belgium predominantly Catholic and Northern Germany and the Netherlands predominantly Protestant. Civil wars safeguarded the unity of the United States and of Switzerland.

Two efficacious and irrefutable objections could well have been raised against the plans of German aggression. One is that the Germans themselves had contributed as much as they could to the state of affairs that they considered so deplorable. The other is that war is incompatible with the international division of labor. But “progressives” and nationalists were not in a position to challenge Nazism on these grounds. They were not themselves concerned with the maintenance of the international division of labor; they advocated government control of business which must necessarily lead toward protectionism and finally toward autarky.

The fallacious doctrines of Nazism cannot withstand the criticism of sound economics, today disparaged as orthodox. But whoever clings to the dogmas of popular neo-Mercantilism and advocates government control of business is impotent to refute them. Fabian and Keynesian “unorthodoxy” resulted in a confused acceptance of the tenets of Nazism. Its application in practical policies frustrated all endeavors to form a common front of all nations menaced by the aspirations of Nazism.

Ludwig von MisesLudwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) taught in Vienna and New York and served as a close adviser to the Foundation for Economic Education. He is considered the leading theorist of the Austrian School of the 20th century.

Mohammed and the Two Faces of Islam

A reader sent me a link to an op-ed in the Bradenton Herald titled, “Facts about Muslim faith ignored as fear-mongering, fabrications spread.” The op-ed was written by Hassan Shibly, Director for the Council for American Islamic Relations – Florida (CAIR-FL).

Shibly states in the op-ed:

“[The] Prophet Muhammad migrated to Medina to seek freedom of religion and fought several defensive battles while building alliances with Jewish and Christian communities.”

During a 2005 interview, Shibly supported the following statements about non-Muslims and homosexuals made by Khalid Yasin his mentor:

“There’s no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend. If you prefer the clothing of the kafirs over the clothing of the Muslims, most of those names that’s on most of those clothings [sic] is faggots, homosexuals and lesbians.”

Read more.

In August 2014 Shibly tweeted that “Israel and its supporters are enemies of God and humanity.

So which is the correct interpretation of Mohammed? Which of these statements is the real Hassan Shibly?

The answer is both are correct in the mind of Shibly. Don Boys, Ph.D. in a 2004 column titled, “Islam Permits Lying to Deceive Unbelievers and Bring World Domination!” writes:

al-Taqiyya: deception; the Islamic word for concealing or disguising one’s beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies.

It is impossible to understand Islam and Muslims by listening to their protestations against terror and their proclamations of patriotism for America. Usually, it is wise and fair to give people the benefit of the doubt but when it comes to national safety and the future of America, we had better look twice, even thrice at Muslim patriotism. Why? Because Islam permits lying! It is called “Al-taqiyya.” One Muslim said that Al-taqiyya means dissimulation then he expanded it to diplomacy but he should have gone further to deception.

Now some Muslims who do not follow the Koran are as faithful Americans as any of us, but the problem is, we cannot know.

Read more.

Dr. Boys notes, “Muslims are permitted to lie: (1) to save their lives, (2) to reconcile a husband and wife, (3) to persuade a woman into a bedroom and (4) to facilitate one on his journey. Muslims are even permitted to disavow Islam and Mohammed if it is not a genuine heart-felt rejection. Muslims will tell you that concealment of a truth is not an abandonment of that truth if it benefits Islam.”

So is Shibly lying to save his life? He states, “I am scared.” Or is he facilitating deception in his journey to bring Islam to America? That is the question. 

Shibly blames the Muslim migration to Europe on American foreign policy stating, “In reality, the migration we see is a direct result of our failed foreign policy that destabilized the Middle East, such as the illegal invasion of Iraq, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the birth of groups like ISIS.”

But the Islamic State (ISIS) was birthed after President Obama removed all troops from Iraq. So how can this be? Why are Muslims and Christians alike being slaughtered by Muslims in the Middle East and Africa? Answer: Because they have been for 1400 years, ever since Mohammed migrated from Mecca to Median in 622 and ended with the conquest of Mecca in 630.

It is the global strategy to establish the Caliphate.

To understand Islam, one must understand Mohammed. Shibly has stated to the author that he “traces his blood line directly to Mohammed.”

Shibly is not only a follower of Mohammed, his family lineage goes back to Mohammed.

Please watch this video by Dr. Bill Warner:

Why the Holocaust Should Matter to You by Jeffrey Tucker

People tour the nation’s capital to be delighted by symbols of America’s greatness and history. They seek out monuments and museums that pay tribute to the nation state and its works. They want to think about the epic struggles of the past, and how mighty leaders confronted and vanquished enemies at home and abroad.

But what if there was a monument that took a different tack? Instead of celebrating power, it counseled against its abuses. Instead of celebrating the state and its works, it showed how these can become ruses to deceive and destroy. Instead of celebrating nationalist songs, symbols, and stories, it warned that these can be used as tools of division and oppression.

What if this museum was dedicated to memorializing one of history’s most ghastly experiments in imperial conquest, demographic expulsion, and eventual extermination, to help us understand it and never repeat it?

Such a museum does exist. It is the US Holocaust Museum. It is the Beltway’s most libertarian institution, a living rebuke to the worship of power as an end in itself.

I lived in Washington, DC, when the Holocaust Museum was being built, and I vaguely recall when it opened. I never went, though I had the opportunity; I remember having a feeling of dread about the prospect of visiting it. Many people must feel the same way. Surely we already know that mass murder by the state is evil and wrong. Do we really need to visit a museum on such a ghastly subject?

The answer is yes. This institution is a mighty tribute to human rights and human dignity. It provides an intellectual experience more moving and profound than any I can recall having. It takes politics and ideas out of the realm of theory and firmly plants them in real life, in our own history. It shows the consequences of bad ideas in the hands of evil men, and invites you to experience the step-by-step descent into hell in chronological stages.

The transformation the visitor feels is intellectual but also even physical: as you approach the halfway point you notice an increase in your heart rate and even a pit in your stomach.

Misconceptions

Let’s dispel a few myths that people who haven’t visited might have about the place.

  • The museum is not maudlin or manipulative. The narrative it takes you through is fact-based, focused on documentation (film and images), with a text that provides a careful chronology. One might even say it is a bit too dry, too merely factual. But the drama emerges from the contrast between the events and the calm narration.
  • It is not solely focused on the Jewish victims; indeed, all victims of the National Socialism are discussed, such as the Catholics in Poland. But the history of Jewish persecution is also given great depth and perspective. It is mind boggling to consider how a regime that used antisemitism to manipulate the public and gain power ended up dominating most of Europe and conducting an extermination campaign designed to wipe out an entire people.
  • The theme of the museum is not that the Holocaust was an inexplicable curse that mysteriously descended on one people at one time; rather the museum attempts to articulate and explain the actual reasons — the motives and ideology — behind the events, beginning with bad ideas that were only later realized in action when conditions made them possible.
  • The narrative does not attempt to convince the visitor that the Holocaust was plotted from the beginning of Nazi rule; in fact, you discover a very different story. The visitor sees how bad ideas (demographic central planning; scapegoating of minorities; the demonization of others) festered, leading to ever worsening results: boycotts of Jewish-owned business, racial pogroms, legal restrictions on property and religion, internments, ghettoization, concentration camps, killings, and finally a carefully constructed and industrialized machinery of mass death.
  • The museum does not isolate Germans as solely or uniformly guilty. Tribute is given to the German people, dissenters, and others who also fell victim to Hitler’s regime. As for moral culpability, it unequivocally belongs to the Nazis and their compliant supporters in Germany and throughout Europe. But the free world also bears responsibility for shutting its borders to refugees, trapping Jews in a prison state and, eventually, execution chamber.
  • The presentation is not rooted in sadness and despair; indeed, the museum tells of heroic efforts to save people from disaster and the resilience of the Jewish people in the face of annihilation. Even the existence of the museum is a tribute to hope because it conveys the conviction that we can learn from history and act in a way that never repeats this terrible past.

The Deeper Roots of the Holocaust

For the last six months, I’ve been steeped in studying and writing about the American experience with eugenics, the “policy science” of creating a master race. The more I’ve read, the more alarmed I’ve become that it was ever a thing, but it was all the rage in the Progressive Era. Eugenics was not a fringe movement; it was at the core of ruling-class politics, education, and culture. It was responsible for many of the early experiments in labor regulation. It was the driving force behind marriage licenses, minimum wages, restrictions on opportunities for women, and immigration quotas and controls.

The more I’ve looked into the subject, the more I’m convinced that it is not possible fully to understand the birth of the 20th century Leviathan without an awareness of eugenics. Eugenics was the original sin of the modern state that knows no limits to its power.

Once a regime decides that it must control human reproduction — to mold the population according to a central plan and divide human beings into those fit to thrive and those deserving extinction — you have the beginning of the end of freedom and civilization. The prophets of eugenics loathed the Jews, but also any peoples that they deemed dangerous to those they considered worthy of propagation. And the means they chose to realize their plans was top-down force.

So far in my reading on the subject, I’ve studied the origin of eugenics until the late 1920s, mostly in the US and the UK. And so, touring the Holocaust Museum was a revelation. It finally dawned on me: what happened in Germany was the extension and intensification of the same core ideas that were preached in the classrooms at Yale, Harvard, and Princeton decades earlier.

Eugenics didn’t go away. It just took on a more violent and vicious form in different political hands. Without meaningful checks on state power, people with eugenic ambitions can find themselves lording over a terror state. It was never realized in the United States, but it happened elsewhere. The stuffy academic conferences of the 1910s, the mutton-chopped faces of the respected professorial class, mutated in one generation to become the camps and commandants of the Nazi killing machine. The distance between eugenics and genocide, from Boston to Buchenwald, is not so great.

There are moments in the tour when this connection is made explicit, as when it is explained how, prior to the Nazis, the United States had set the record for forced sterilizations; how Hitler cited the US case for state planning of human reproduction; how the Nazis were obsessed with racial classification and used American texts on genetics and race as a starting point.

And think of this: when Progressive Era elites began to speak this way, to segment the population according to quality, and to urge policies to prevent “mongrelization,” there was no “slippery slope” to which opponents could point. This whole approach to managing the social order was unprecedented, and so a historical trajectory was pure conjecture. They could not say “Remember! Remember where this leads!”

Now we have exactly that history, and a moral obligation to point to it and learn from it.

What Can We Learn?

My primary takeaway from knitting this history together and observing its horrifying outcome is this: that any ideology, movement, or demagogue that dismisses universal human rights, that disparages the dignity of any person based on group characteristics, that attempts to segment the population into the fit and unfit, or in any way seeks to use the power of the state to put down some in order to uplift others, is courting outcomes that are dangerous to the whole of humanity. It might not happen immediately, but, over time, such rhetoric can lay the foundations for the machinery of death.

And there is also another, perhaps more important lesson: bad ideas have a social and political momentum all their own, regardless of anyone’s initial intentions. If you are not aware of that, you can be led down, step by step, to a very earthly hell.

At the same time, the reverse is also true: good ideas have a momentum that can lead to the flourishing of peace, prosperity, and universal human dignity. It is up to all of us. We must choose wisely, and never forget.

Jeffrey A. TuckerJeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Digital Development at FEE and CLO of the startup Liberty.me. Author of five books, and many thousands of articles, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World.  Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook. Email.