The President of the Czech Republic V�clav Klaus has a blunt, and timely message for Europe, and by extension, for all western governments and those who elect them.
The question is what kind of ideas is favoured by the intellectuals. The question is whether the intellectuals are neutral in their choice of ideas with which they are ready to deal with. Hayek argued that they are not. They do not hold or try to spread all kinds of ideas. They have very clear and, in some respect, very understandable preferences for some of them. They prefer ideas, which give them jobs and income and which enhance their power and prestige.
They, therefore, look for ideas with specific characteristics. They look for ideas, which enhance the role of the state because the state is usually their main employer, sponsor or donator. That is not all. According to Hayek “the power of ideas grows in proportion to their generality, abstractness, and even vagueness”. Hence it is not surprising that the intellectuals are mostly interested in abstract, not directly implementable ideas. This is also the way of thinking, in which they have comparative advantage. They are not good at details. They do not have ambitions to solve a problem. They are not interested in dealing with the everyday’s affairs of common citizens. Hayek put it clearly: “the intellectual, by his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical difficulties.” He is interested in visions and utopias and because “socialist thought owes its appeal largely to its visionary character” (and I would add lack of realism and utopian nature), the intellectual tends to become a socialist.
In a similar way, Raymond Aron, in his famous essay “The Opium of Intellectuals”, analyzed not only the well-known difference between the revolutionary and reformist way of thinking but also – and this is more relevant in this context – the difference between “prosaic” and “poetry”. Whereas “the prosaic model of thinking lacks the grandeur of utopia” (Roger Kimball), the socialist approach is – in the words of Aron – based “on the poetry of the unknown, of the future, of the absolute”. As I understand it, this is exactly the realm of intellectuals. Some of us want to immediately add that “the poetry of the absolute is an inhuman poetry”.
[…]
Fifteen years after the collapse of communism I am afraid, more than at the beginning of its softer (or weaker) version, of social-democratism, which has become – under different names, e.g. the welfare state or the soziale Marktwirtschaft – the dominant model of the economic and social system of current Western civilization. It is based on big and patronizing government, on extensive regulating of human behavior, and on large-scale income redistribution.
In Canada, the “poets of soziale Trudeapia” are running amok.
Health Canada is calling for a change to the law that prevents peers and nurses in the city’s sanctioned safe injection site from helping people inject.
Health care workers can only supervise and offer medical assistance if a user hurts themselves and gets sick or overdoses.
If nurses help an addict shoot up, they could be charged with possession or trafficking.
“We need them to help,” said Ms. Tobin.
“And we need more places like the safe injection site. It’s so busy now, it’s being used all the time and people are sitting on the street, getting people who don’t know what they’re doing to inject them.”
In today’s modern, increasingly socialist democracies, nanny-state legislation (if it saves one life!) and cradle-to-grave “social safety nets” are the opiate of the middle class, while the politics of race and identity, envy, and “social justice” are the stock and trade of the economic underclass.
The net result is a society of entitlement that absolves the individual of personal responsibility and creates an illusion that consequences are made to be avoided. There is always “failure of society”, a previous generation, or corporate dynasty at whose feet the blame for personal failure lies, always someone else with more “ability to pay” to pick up the tab.
“They owe you” .
Consider a city built, unwisely, below sea level, protected by massive levies and powerful pumps provided by the state, maintained by the state, with all the apparent permanence of the state.
In the unthinkable event that those fail, experts and engineers plot strategies for worst case scenerios. They conduct disaster drills, with fake victims and fake blood. The state provides modern highways and mass transit, and communications systems and weather satellites.
Then, when the day comes that the unthinkable becomes possible, the planning and technology move into high gear. Government officials, with the assistance of private and public media, warn of a tremendous hurricane as it grows in strength. The images are available world wide as satellites track its path, and local TV records the destruction of those it has already battered.
Government officials and elected leaders urge the citizens to evacuate to save their lives. They warn of the scope of the impending storm and the potential of devastation. They mobilize and priorize. Hospital staff stay on duty to care for the sick and infirm. The doors to the largest facility available that may withstand the storm are opened in hopes that those who had no way of escaping, or somehow learned of them too late, can find refuge.
And tens of thousands ignore them and remain in their homes.
Many of them have cars parked in their driveways. Many who don’t are able-bodied and capable of walking. They ignore the warning and simply remain where they are, though they have children and elderly in their care.
With the storm passed, the waters rising faster than the heat, electricity failed and supplies running out, when the truth begins to dawn on the survivors – that the state is not all-powerful, that the mere human beings charged with coming to their aid,are, in fact, mere human beings who cannot come sweeping to their rescue like the cavalry over a Hollywood hill, that there are so many to rescue, because like they, so many have ignored the warnings – do they pool their resources?
Do they find strength in human dignity and sanctity of life? Do the strong come to the aid of the weak? Do they summon patience and resolve in the knowledge that help is on the way, if only they can find the courage to help themselves a little longer?
What is their response to this consequence that has befallen them, a consequence largely of their own making?
“You owe us” .
They take what others have failed to provide, those things required to sustain life – jewelry and television sets. And when taking isn’t enough (it never is), they devolve into predation and anarchy, abandon the weak, turn upon the innocent and each other – and all in a matter of days.
In former times entire nations found the strength to rise to the occasion, ordinary people understood that survival depended on their shared common decency and respect for their fellow citizen. That, by co-operating and persevering, they might create coping mechanisms through pooling skills and resources, and to be sure, the majority of those trapped in New Orleans will have done just that.
But, in former times, whole nations were not living in a time of entitlement, where all and any are provided for by an all-encompassing “social safety net”, funded by those faceless others with more, who have life easier, whom we have been trained to envy.
Those human failings, irresponsible and anti-social behaviors that once brought consequences in the community – shame, ostracization, and deserved personal deprivation – are today excused, assigned new and neutral nomenclature (all the better for medical diagnosis), prescribed “tolerance”, and if possible, assigned the politics of race or class, so that collective guilt may be mined to ensure that self-destructive behavior gains not only acceptance, but state funding.
The predatory violence and anarchy befalling New Orleans is not the result of a freak convergence of forces brought on by unnatural disaster.
It’s a warning.
(See also: American Spectator: Masques of Death)
Nice to see our own Fraser Institute credited in Mr. Klaus’ bibliography.
You have been watching the demise of a great nation for decades. It is being brought to it’s knees by political correctness and multiculturalism, by creeping socialism and growing demands that the state provide all. It is a gigantic battle taking place now for America’s future. The world is a spectator to an ancient Rome; the decline is not certain but no longer abstract. The fight is still on.
One of the best posts ever Kate!
The opiate of the elite is unaccountable pwer, prestige and absulute conformity to their ideas.
In Canada this cloistered illuminati is an extention of the “natural ruling party” and promoters of the single party state. This clique of political/academic elites (the master ukase) , are a integral wing of the federal Liberal political cartel.
They seem to celebrate diversity in everything except opion, ideology and political debate.
Truer words have never been spoken, although we all know it is GW’s fault. Now that the MSM have run out of “exclusive” coverage of mother nature’s damage, they are all wondering aloud why there is not a guardsman (err, person) on every street corner. The race card is coming out as well as the social-economic (sp?) class struggle. In the midst of all this there is some glimmer of hope. There are actually some stories leaking out of people helping people, family giving their whole house for others to use and complete strangers lending assistance.
The question now is:”What have we learned from this?”
Paul; it is not just the US we see crumbling; it is Western democracies in general. Kates essay is absolutely right on. We as citizens do not feel a sense of personal responsibility anymore. Our personal integrity has dropped and our sense of entitlement has exploded. Look at our health care system in Canada. What gets me the most is the United States government will still stand up and make difficult decisions and is therefore resisting the tide much better than Canada whose leaders won’t make any decisions without doing a survey to determine wind direction. Can you imagine Canada’s response to a tsunami on the west coast.
I should think that the leftists would be all excited about the disaster in New Orleans. We’re just watching Darwinism and Evolution in action in N’awlins right now, yes? They should be encouraging Bush to keep the troops out so as not to interfere with a natural process.
In one corner…
A BATTERED CITY�S NO-NONSENSE LEADER
NEW ORLEANS MAYOR IS THRUST INTO SPOTLIGHT
By SHAWN MCCARTHY
September 2, 2005
…Mr. Nagin has approached this crisis as he approached his job all along: with methodical determination and a no-nonsense style.
Earlier this week, he faced a group of anxious residents who had taken refuge at the Hyatt. They wanted reassurance and a sense of when they could return to their homes and resume their lives. He offered no sugarcoating.
“You need to listen very carefully,” Mr. Nagin told them. “For the next two or three months, in this area, there will not be any commerce at all. No electricity, no restaurants. This is the real deal. It’s not living conditions.”…
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050902/STORMNAGIN02/TPInternational/TopStories
and in the other corner…
HURRICANE KATRINA EXPOSES
RACISM AND INEQUALITY
By Lee Sustar
01 September, 2005
Socialist Worker
Decades of official neglect, racism and the impact of global warming magnified the destructive impact of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and other parts of the South�.
…”Affluent white people fled the Big Easy in their SUVs, while the old and car-less–mainly Black–were left behind in their below-sea-level shotgun shacks and aging tenements to face the watery wrath,” activist Mike Davis wrote of the evacuation plans for Ivan. “New Orleans had spent decades preparing for inevitable submersion by the storm surge of a class-five hurricane. Civil defense officials conceded they had 10,000 body bags on hand to deal with the worst-case scenario. But no one seemed to have bothered to devise a plan to evacuate the city�s poorest or most infirm residents.”…
http://www.countercurrents.org/cc-sustar010905.htm
Best article ever, Kate. Less Kumbaya, more tough questions are needed right now.
Kate, good post but I should point out that evacuation is not always possible or desirable.
If a similar calamity were to befall Toronto, I have two very elderly (80s and 90s) relatives here who are ill and have zero mobility. One of them, although she cannot feed herself, get groceries, or remember what medication she is supposed to take, is still deemed healthy enough by her doctors to remain at home alone. (She is not alone, though, I’m constantly around to help her.)
In a situation like NOLA where streets are impassable, food and water nonexistent, I would be very reluctant indeed to evacuate, knowing that these two relatives would be forced to remain behind. They cannot even walk up their own stairs let alone trek across a city on foot. For their sake I would have to remain behind to render whatever assistance I could. I could not evacuate and condemn them to certain death.
Chris – Bush declared a state of emergency two days before Katrina hit. Those who had elderly family members at risk had a responsibility to move them, if they had any means available whatsoever.
I understand that not everyone had those means – but that is the purpose of the post itself. The social decay of New Orleans is responsible for the scale of this disaster – the hurricane was just the catalyst.
Vaclav Klaus’s piece is excellent.
Was it only me that could’nt shake a scary mental picture of the “Intellectual” personified as John Raulston Saul and his wife ex GG Her Eminence.
Agreed, Best post ever Kate !
Couldn’t agree more.
I have a feeling that this storm somewhat like the OJ trial will further divide, not unite North Americans.
Over the past 36 hours, I have been watching
video clips of people chanting “We want help.
We want food”. I found myself wondering what
they were doing there? They had time to
evacuate; if they were going to stay, why didn’t
they stock up on food and water?
I also wonder at a city staff that tell people
to congregate in large buildings and not make
provision for water and sanitation.
I also wonder at FEMA pleading they didn’t know,
although it was on CNN. I wonder at the absence
of martial law.
But most I wonder why the city wasn’t evacuated
by the city or the people.
The Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana are Democrats, members of a political party that is historically renowned for corruption in that state. They’ve done nothing before this catastrophe except keep their voting constituency poor and minimally fed with deeds and maximally fed with promises and resentments. It’s a culture of helplessness with government as more the benefitted rather than the benefactor. What we’re witnessing, as history reveals how it has occurred in the past, is the frailty of feudalism. The elites need their serfs to rule, and will abandon them to fate when dire circumstances ensue. The Leftist elites that rule Canada would cower and wail in the same manner as the Louiiana officials have done if a catastrophe crashes their house of cards. As the saying goes, “The truth will out.”
Absolutely perfect analysis, Kate.
Some practical hardware thinking; [No time for the pleasure of ivory tower artsy – fartsy theory]
I have suggested a drug – rehab centre in the far north before, but not with this twist.
A cooperative *U.S. and Canada*, drug recovery complex up north in the NWT.
We have cooperative Military sites in the North and they work just fine.
The Mayor of New Orleans seemed broken with his inability to contain the horror of crazed and armed drug addicts breaking into pharmacies, Hospitals and medical centres to make up for their lost connections. They were committing rape and murder, as well as looting.
What is Vancouver going to be like when the next big quake hits and with tsunami flooded streets, our crazed junkies go on the rampage looking to take the *edge* off?
Even on Vancouver Island here, the police scanner makes it clear that the druggies gang is growing.
The shoot-up Centre in Vancouver’s Gas Town is a limp-wristed effort by City Hall to get a good number of junkies off the streets in time for the coming world games.
They don’t give a damn about all the dying addicts. Drug re-hab places simply do not work very well in Cities. There is no way to control the drug flow.
In the NWT one only has to keep an eye peeled for aircraft or helicopters dropping small packets. 73s TG
Yes, a most excellent essay, Kate!
Events such as these that shine a cold, clear light on the real effects of creeping socialism should be an education to all. Unfortunately I fear a majority of people will not see the connection between their political philosophy and real world outcomes.
When discussing socio/political issues with others, I usually run into a problem of the scales people use. Most people conciously or unconciously see the social choices on a scale consisting of Left and Right, the extremes being being ant-like communism on the Left and jack-boot fascism on the Right. Hence the success of politicians claiming to occupy the “middle ground”. When I have used another “scale”, specifically totalitarianism on one end and anarchy on the other, the “middle ground” choices people make are frequently quite different. Personal freedom and responsibility come to the fore. One scale is based on statism, the other on human beings.
I may be pissing in the wind here, but I think the reason many otherwise intelligent and rational people make bad choices is based on an incorrect world view. Thoughts, anyone?
Actually, Mike – jack-boot fascism is also the traditional territory of the left. It’s just that when they get caught, they get busy reassigning the dictators their ideology spawns as “right wing”.
The hard right in my view, is more akin to Ayn Rand objectivism, in which government provides only minimal services, and individuals number one responsiblity is to themselves and for themselves, and by extension to the support of a healthy, self-sustaining society.
This is why I scratch my head when others use “right wing” as a perjorative.
I dunno, Kate. I guess I basically agree with the overall theme here, i.e. “civil society isn’t faring that well”.
But you start by arguing that the intellectuals have gotten us into this mess; then move to the topic of Katrina, and argue that the underclass screwed up by not listening to the experts. It looks like pulling on both ends of a rope to me.
At least the assumptions of the underclass, under your characterization, are consistent: last month they assumed someone else would look after them, and they still believe that today. It’s the message to them from above that’s changed.
Can you think of any (say) politician who has ever admitted, “When worse comes to worst, and in the end, you’re all on your own, and we can’t help you”? Before Tuesday, anyway? This kind of frank acknowledgement of reality, if it was stated on some kind of regular basis, would seem to be a necessary precondition for wider self-reliance by citizens as a whole.
I suggest you read the entire Klaus piece, and not just the quotes.
🙂
Comprehensive and well written – a masterpiece Kate! This post should be in every Canadian and American newspaper, on the frount page. People who choose to throw their freedom away in favor of being “kept pets” of control freaks are setting themselves up for abandonment.
“…because the state is usually their main employer, sponsor or donator. – …the intellectuals are mostly interested in abstract, not directly implementable ideas.” Hayek
Edwina, you must have passed something when you read this? Is it hard to espouse conservative values while at the same time depending on the largesse of the federal Liberals? Isn’t there a word for that?
Kate, I have to say that you view of the big picture is absolutely first rate. I dare any MSM paper to print that on the opinion pages. Thank you for a good read.
Kate; As much as I admire your succint posts, this effort was superb. How about every Friday, as a special treat, run up another post of this length.
OK Kate, I read the whole Klaus piece. It’s very good, and I think your excerpt is pretty representative. Again, I think the point that our politicians, leaders, “intellectuals”, whatever, have done society a disservice is a good one.
The logical segue from this should really be, “No wonder the underclass behaves so dependently!” Shouldn’t it? Whereas I read your post as also being very critical of the underclass that didn’t do what it took to leave, and it undermines or even contradicts the broader point.
However, judging by the rest of the comments, which amount to a bunch of sloppy kisses, I may be misreading you. What can I say? 🙂
Politicians exploit the dangerous ideology of intellectuals, by creating classes of people divided by race, by “sexual orientation”, by gender or culture or whatever other identity they can use to shoehorn their message of intitlement to. They create a dependancy on the state with the false message that the state can always provide.
They tell people (aided and abetted by the afore mentioned intellectuals) that they are not responsible for their choices, that they are being held down, or held separate, and in so doing, ensure they are further hindered from finding their own solutions and joining the rest of mature society.
That’s been going on for generations. The more dangerous development is more recent – it’s a message to the middle class that they too, are entitled. This time to the earnings of their fellow citizens, and more importantly, corporations and the very successful, that their need for ever more expansive social programs – think medicare, federal child care, are the responsibility of government.
The problem is that it doesn’t work, and like any other pyramid scheme, when it fails, it’s the guys at the bottom and middle who get shafted.
It’s happened in New Orleans, it’s going to happen here, if some of our so-called leaders do not stop shrinking from accusations of racism, fascism, bigotry etc. every time they try to discuss the problems created by identity politics, and the resulting culture of sloth, dependancy, permissiveness, self-destructive behavior, and the crime it spawns.
Thanks, Kate.
Yes, evidently we both use the same “scale”. Refreshing. I use the term “anarchy” as an EXTREME example only with people who may not be familiar with Randite objectivism.
I also think the incorrect “scale” is the cause of so many people being confused as to why I can be a libertarian and also support Conservative principles. Definitians are important! Heinlein’s concept of the formal study of semantics would be great.
David Webers’ description, in his “Honor Harrington” series, of the long slide of the “Republic of Haven” to disaster comes to mind. The inevitable end leading to war or blood in the streets.
On another note, I’ve been contacted by some of my compatriots in the Navy for input on what they should take to the Gulf of Mexico should they be deployed (we fought the Manitoba floods). I doubt we will be deployed, but…
I keep finding myself hoping there isn’t a major terror cell ready to push up their operations to take advantage of the massive mobilization of the national guard to the gulf states. Another few days, and America will probably be at her most vulnerable point ever for such an attack.
An example of why the Canadian Left truly sucks, courtesy of Robert McClelland.
Definitely belongs in the Best of SDA column!
Jason
I would love to see your piece as a column in the National Post. Great one, Kate.
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/1303-.html
From Kate at small dead animals:Government officials and elected leaders urge the citizens to evacuate to save their lives. They warn of the scope of the impending storm and the potential of devastation. They mobilize and priorize. Hospital staff stay on
Bravo Kate. You’ve outdone yourself.
RG
In reply to Maple Stump – no, it’s not hard to ‘espouse conservative values while depending on the federal largesse’.
You see, in Canada, no private universities are allowed, so, if you are an academic, and stay in Canada, by definition, your pay comes out of the same purse as pays the corrupt politicians.
But, what you are suggesting – that IF one is paid by the State, THEN, one must be a servant of that state – is, in my view, unethical. Why?
Because it denies freedom of thought and speech.
It says – “I have purchased you; I am Master and you are Slave. Very Hegelian..and I’m not a fan of Hegel.
After all, that would mean that you, as an individual, have permitted yourself to be bought, enslaved, corrupted. Does a scientist, a doctor, who is paid by a research centre, necessarily become a sycophant of that centre? Does a doctor become enslaved by the hospital which pays him? Do our Canadian doctors, all bound into a public health care system, become enslaved, intellectually, by the government which pays them? I hope not.
I’ve been a constant critic of the academic world, which is filled to the overflowing brim with leftists, with anti-Americans, with the most sloppy, ignorant illogical, self-serving, arrogant, power-hungry people ..you may not be able to imagine how bad it is. That includes faculty, who jostle and denigrate each other for appointments; it includes the federal research funding agencies – where ‘peer review’ has become demoted to politicization of funding; it includes the university faculty unions..And so on.
Academics get paid, in my view, far more than they are worth…I taught 9 hours a week -and my faculty union moaned about this ‘load’! Can you imagine! Nine hours! And no, it doesn’t take another nine hours to set up a lecture or mark papers! How about those who’ve been teaching the same course for 20 years??? I know LOTS like that. You’d never last in the business world with that type of behaviour.
In Europe, I know those who teach 18 hours a week. Every three years at my university, we get a half term off (which amounts to 8 months paid leave)..I know those in Europe who, in 20 years, have never had a term off. Canadian and American academics are a spoiled group.
And – I’ve been extremely isolated for this outspokenness. But so what? Why would I want to associate with such ignorance, such arrogance, such constant elbowing for power, such consant denigration of others?
The academics whom I work with, are not, for the most part, Canadians, who fit very neatly into Vaclav Klaus’ outline of them. I work primarily with people in the natural sciences, maths, computers – rarely, rarely, with people in the social sciences or humanities, because their fields permit them the relativist abstract emptiness of postmodernism.
And I work primarily with people in the US, Europe (not France! – because the francophone researchers tend to isolate themselves by language)…and Australia, Brazil.
Canada – no; they are about 20 years behind in research..all due to the paternalistic top-heavy hand of Ottawa, which has centralized and politicized research.
Does that answer your question?
One can see here in Canada — at the CBC, and among the state-sponsored poverty-pimps — the same kind of characters he describes as having power and influence before the fall of communism. He writes that when the constraints were removed “the first frustrated and openly protesting group were “journalists, teachers, publicists, radio commentators (and others).” He says “They especially understood that their valuation by the impersonal forces of supply and demand (was) less favorable than their own self-valuation.”
That may explain the reflexive attempts at mob-rule that we see whenever there is the first hint of even minor restructuring of the socialist paradigm.
The “criminal” “insurgence” of New Orleans will be crushed harder than Fallujah.
This is the best post I have seen on the subject of post-Katrina New Orleans. Not what the apologists of Republican or Democrat partisans would like to read, but the truth amidst the wailings and gnashings.
Bravo, Kate. You have outdone yourself with this masterpiece, the best I’ve hitherto seen on SDA. Once again I feel heartened that I’m not alone when it comes to understanding the intricate realities of contemporary society. It is your serious, bluntly honest examination and expression thereof that reminds me as to why I respect you so. Each time you do this, my day is made. You’re for real. Seldom am I able to say this about anyone, society being as it is nowadays. There isn’t any wonder whatsoever as to the reason for so many of our fellow “right”-leaning citizens praise you as above.
So many points above, so little time and space to concur with all of them. So I’ll be selective: the three words you used, describing the mentality of the masses these days, “You owe us”, reminds me of something I posted awhile back when debating leftists Dr. Dawg, TB and others I’ve forgotten about. I had declared that we don’t owe anything to people of such mentality. What, after all, have these people, the greedy, selfish leftist elites and their millions of dependents, ever done FOR us, the ordinary folk who refuse to surrender our intellectual and spiritual sovereignty despite being expected to do so? Have they ever asked if we wanted any particular worthless or even harmful policy or program or even made the case for it? No. They simply imposed it, fully funded by us. And forced us to suffer the social, economic and personal consequences of dogmatic leftist philosophy. Yet, ever so galling, these same people vociferously demand absolute scientific proof that our Conservative representatives in the CPC have workable policies. We bluntly honest, knowledgeable folk need not justify to the left what they could, with free will, undertake to prove to themselves but are too lazy and intellectually small to do so, which is their own fault, not ours.
I have observed their responses, with, for example, ad hominems about early-thirties Germany. They accuse US of elitism. They mutter something about us wanting to have a “totalitarian” regime. They say they “hate the bastards”. David Herle is on record as declaring the Liberals must marginalize us Conservatives as being on the “far right” to the electorate, obviously code for more of the same sort of slurring and dehumanization the likes of which we’ve seen in Elinor Caplan, Hedy Fry, Judy Sgro, Svend Robinson, Scott Brison et al. I fear that Conservatives may again allow them to get away with it. It cannot be let alone. It must be dealt with with fight-fire-with-fire actions, such as presenting irrefutable proof of Liberal bigotry, racism, sexism and all kinds of extremism, not to mention their hidden agenda to implement communism via the burglarization of Alberta’s 100%-owned resources just to satisfy the misguided fools who envy anyone who rightfully earns a good living and who must surrender ever-increasing bushels of the rightful fruits of their labors. I would say to the leadership of the CPC that they shouldn’t fear utilizing the sledgehammer of brutal truth upon their, after all, deserving opponents. We are in the right, the just and honorable position, to pulverize the real enemies of good society, good government and genuine democracy.
I look forward to the campaign. I will not sit idly by this time. I want to be a part of it however I can. It’s after all, critically important.
On November 25, 2003, UPI reported that: “Last week, the European Court of Auditors in Luxembourg released a 400-page report that found “systematic problems, over-estimations, faulty transactions, significant errors and other shortcomings” in the EU’s budget. EU’s auditors could only vouch for 10 percent of the $120 billion the EU spent in 2002. It was also the ninth successive year the auditors were unable to certify the budget as a whole.
“Europeans are yet to face such “serious underlying issues,” [Czech President Vaclav] Klaus said, because “they are still in the dream world of welfare, long vacations, guaranteed high pensions, and cradle-to-grave social security, and which obviates the imperative need to face reality.”
“The biggest challenge for the Czech republic, Klaus said, is how to avoid falling into the trap of “a new form of collectivism.” Asked whether he meant a new form of neo-Marxism, he said, “absolutely not, but I see other sectors endangering free societies.”
“The enemies of free societies today are those who want to burden us down again with layer upon layer of regulations,” president Klaus explained. “We had that in Communist times.”
Matt : “Can you think of any (say) politician who has ever admitted, “When worse comes to worst, and in the end, you’re all on your own, and we can’t help you”? Before Tuesday, anyway? This kind of frank acknowledgement of reality, if it was stated on some kind of regular basis, would seem to be a necessary precondition for wider self-reliance by citizens as a whole.”>>>>>
Putin meets with Beslan mothers (Friday, 02/09/05)
President Vladimir Putin acknowledged to a group of mothers from Beslan that the Russian government could not guarantee complete security for its people in the face of terrorism.
But he said that was no excuse for government officials to have allowed such a terrible tragedy as last year’s school hostage seizure to take place.
In brief televised remarks, he told a delegation of mothers and other relatives of victims from the grief-stricken southern town that no country in the world could provide such protection — much less one, like Russia, that has undergone so many wrenching changes in the past few decades.>>
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1881862005
ET ends his comments with * the paternalistic, heavy hand of Government that has centralized and politicised research.*
Thank you for venting the fetid gasses from the enclave you occupy. It was very interesting and refreshing.
You have added firmness to many of the perceptions I had formed from the outer edges of higher halls of learning.
I am still somewhat amazed at how the basics of integrity are so easily ignored by so many professors who will participate in a Government sponsered study or project and cheerfully collect two and sometimes three paralell fat paycheques.
Yes, I know, I am supposed to accept that they are doing three jobs expertly and diligently while holed up in Cape Breton’s finest holiday hotel, sweating bullets over a Government oil – spill study.
I always choke on pills that size, but I certainly enjoyed your insights ET. 73s TG
Good post, Kate, though I would slightly disagree. For those who cared to look, it’s been obvious that America has some ‘hoods where this type of predatory violence and anarchy is pretty much the norm and has been for a few decades. I recall working on a project in Brooklyn where the other side of Flatbush Avenue may as well have been in Haiti or Somalia, for all the law and order that existed. East St. Louis is similar.
It’s just that most people prefer to avert their eyes from these ‘hoods and simply pretend they don’t exist.
I’ve never been to New Orleans, but their behaviour seems to indicate they have areas where law and order has been ceded to neighbourhood gangs, too. So I’d say it’s not so much a warning as it is shining a light into a dark corner that most prefer not to look at.
And I’m not so sure I’d lay the blame so heavily on socialism and entitlements, though that may have played a part in shaping the culture. Places like Haiti, Somalia and Liberia didn’t get the way they are through socialism and entitlements – there’s a coarse and violent culture at work in those places. And it finds an echo in the gangsta rap culture that reigns in certain ‘hoods.
Pertaining to the idea of helping junkies shoot-up.I thought in this country it was illegal to aid and abet a suicide.Can anybody help on this??
Raymond Aron
Because Small Dead Animals mentioned Raymond Aron, I’m linking you to Roger Kimball’s May 2001 article in the New Criterion on Raymond Aron. I very much like the politically incorrect stogie pictured below. I am also linking you to the
ET wrote: “in Canada, no private universities are allowed”
This is not correct. The DeVry Intitutes of Technology are degree-granting institutions, and have conferred BSc degrees in Canada (at least at their Calgary campus) for several years.
Diagnosing New Orleans: a Canadian Perspective
In former times entire nations found the strength to rise to the occasion, ordinary people understood that survival depended on their shared common decency and respect for their fellow citizen. That, by co-operating and persevering, they might c…
Holy smoke, Kate!
You- and the people on this site- are making me work! Damn, but that is nice, and rare treasure indeed!I feel as if I owe you something. As one of your other posts said- “TANSTAAFL”
So, 4 of our ships are going to New Orleans. If I end up going, I’ll miss your missives…
Mike
My goodness, how unkind and hateful you are. How judgemental, in your cozy home with your fuzzy slippers and a coffee cup nearby. Perhaps the folks who did not evacuate New Orleans were plain old POOR. Perhaps they had only $7 in gas money and no credit card for a hotel. And if they left, they’d have to take Granny in her wheelchair and the babies, too, cause they couldn’t take one generation and leave the others, could they? And how would they all go in one beat up car? And where would they go? The Storm Center said get out but who would take them all in? There were no shelters open at that point. And there had been a hundred hurricanes hit the coast. They thought the storm would hit north, or east, not hit them dead on.
How dare you accuse them of being good-for-nuthin’ because they reached out their arms and said ‘Help Me’ when hell unleashed itself on their town.
Please stop spreading this hateful message. It’s wrong and so incredibly mean-spirited.
All I have to say in response to you “suz”, is to advise you work a little on your reading skills.
Just came from a protein wisdom link and was moved to comment because I wanted to point out, contra-“suz”, that this didn’t come across as mean-spirited in the least. Good post all-around.
“You owe us”
Reading Rand, von Mises, and Hayek fifteen years ago was a real eye opener for me. It is good to other people quote from their wisdom. Well done President V�clav Klaus and you too Kate.
Trudeaupia wrote: “Places like Haiti, Somalia and Liberia didn’t get the way they are through socialism and entitlements – there’s a coarse and violent culture at work in those places. And it finds an echo in the gangsta rap culture that reigns in certain ‘hoods.”
Isn’t it astonishing that in such enlightened, leftist-dominated, claiming-to-care nations as Canada and America with all this redistribution of income towards people on the basis of race and all this discrimination in favor of them, we nevertheless see worsening ghettoization in whole areas of cities or geographical areas predominated by citizens, namely Americans of color and Canadians of so-called “Aboriginal” status?
It wouldn’t be unreasonable, therefore, to hypothesize that this favorable treatment, this socialism and “righting of past wrongs”, is misguided, ill-advised and having no positive effects whatsoever if, as we’ve seen in Nawlins and in the aftermath of the Rodney King trial verdicts and the recent, worsening spate of largely identifiable-group perpetrated handgun violence in Toronto (now being dealt with by some sort of proactive prevention for “at-risk” youth, merely throwing cash at the problem w/o any understanding that it won’t work, as Vaclav Klaus put forth) there is a worsening “coarse and violent culture at work” as Kevin Jaeger put it.
Therefore, I cannot help but conclude that this state-sponsored soft racism and socialism regardless of how much income gets “redistributed”, the “answers” being made by today’s administrations are having no positive effects whatsoever as we see now in the real world. Kevin Jaeger, after all, has compared Nawlins to Haiti, Somalia and Liberia. What about the situation wrt Aboriginals in Canada? Remember Oka? See the racial violence stemming from race-based fishing rights which only cause powerful resentment in nonAboriginal fishermen who, after all, do have a Charter guarantee to equality regardless of any racial differences? Why should centuries-old treaties signed before the existence of Canada, the BNA Act and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms take unquestionable precedence over human equality?
I dare any leftist to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that racial favoritism is working and that having a system that treats ALL persons as equal will not have any positive effect. I dare all leftists to be civil, logical, rational, state indubitable facts and use them in a calm, cerebral manner to back up their claims that state-sanctioned racism will help persons of minority status to achieve a better life, both individually and as communities. I double dare the left to judiciously refrain from any tortful defamatory namecalling or dehumanization of those of us who only want to see people have genuinely equal opportunities to succeed and not be trapped in erroneous-socialist-thinking-caused hopeless situations that invariably lead some to behave in uncivilized manners (for which the state and their electors must bear some responsibility for not pursuing full equality for all).
BTW, I admire Bill Cosby for standing up to those who then soundly and erroneously denounced his rational, logical and true criticism of current racially-oriented defeatist and entitlement culture.