Posted on 8/7/2011, 3:41:04 AM by kabar
The truly fundamental question that is at the heart of the disaster toward which we are racing is being debated only in America: is it possible for a free market economy to support a democratic socialist society? On this side of the Atlantic, the model of a national welfare system with comprehensive entitlements, which is paid for by the wealth created through capitalist endeavour, has been accepted...as the essence of post-war political enlightenment.
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But the US has a very different historical experience from European countries, with their accretions of national remorse and class guilt: it has a far stronger and more resilient belief in the moral value of liberty and the dangers of state power. This is a political as much as an economic crisis, but not for the reasons that Mr Obama believes. The ruckus that nearly paralysed the US economy last week...arose from a confrontation over the most basic principles of American life.
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We have arrived at the endgame of what was an untenable doctrine: to pay for the kind of entitlements that populations have been led to expect by their politicians, the wealth-creating sector has to be taxed to a degree that makes it almost impossible for it to create the wealth that is needed to pay for the entitlements that populations have been led to expect, etc, etc.
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A general correction of the imbalance between wealth production and wealth redistribution is now a matter of basic necessity, not ideological preference.
The hardest obstacle to overcome will be the idea that anyone who challenges the prevailing consensus of the past 50 years is irrational and irresponsible. That is what is being said about the Tea Partiers. In fact, what is irrational and irresponsible is the assumption that we can go on as we are.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
our jerbalists were trained in european university socialism.
The Brits do know their tea, too.
Your Hope has been Redistributed. Here’s your Change.
the “journalists” here are for the most part card carrying libs and sway with the wind of popular opinion.
The Tea Party is waking up the free world. About time.
The commenters there mostly get it, too.
I particularly like these that cut to the quick of it:
“Europe is facing a largely self-inflicted perfect storm that threatens the very existence of some of the oldest nation-states in the world. As for the US, “Nothing is certain but debt and taxes. And then more debt. If the government of the United States had to use GAAP -the “Generally Accepted Accounting Practices” that Uncle Sam would be under an SEC investigation and his nephews and nieces would have taken away the keys and cut up his credit card.”
Americans face a choice: “they can rediscover the animating principles of the American idea—of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunities to exploit their talents to the fullest—or they can join most of the rest of the western world in terminal decline. This is a battle for the American idea, and it’s an epic one, but Americans have the ability and innovation to do anything they want to do.” So has Europe. If they stopped relying on the welfare state and got rid of socialist governments and the EU.”
“...And if not corrected by the Tea Party financial truth movement in the U.S., America as well. Ms. Daley correctly points out the PC label of the recent debate in the U.S. as dysfunctional is completely the opposite. The Tea Party movement is asking only for truth to be the by-word.”
BRAVO!!!! Excellet op-ed!
She nails it.
The Dims are angry because our “democracy” worked just as intended with the legislature acting as a check on the executive. Zero and his mouthpieces put out the lie for the last couple weeks that if we didn’t meet the `deadline’ of August 2nd, our credit rating would suffer. And the legislature bought it and acquiesced.
In a nutshell, the problem with national socialism—besides, as the writer notes, its tendency towards oligarchial tyranny, see National Socialist Workers Party, Germany, 1933-1945, `IngSoc’, etc.) is, as PM Thatcher put it—eventually you run out of other people’s money.
The tipping point is when you have more people riding upon than pulling the wagon. We have reached that point: the American `Ponzi scheme’ she points out, the Social Security Administration, came within an ant’s eyelash of being exposed for what it is this past Tuesday.
One of the tenets of the tea party should become “You don’t work, you don’t eat.” Cold-blooded? 2nd Thessalonians 3:10
While we were with you, we gave you the order: “Whoever doesn’t want to work shouldn’t be allowed to eat.”
There it is.
Bump for later.
>>> If we are to survive the looming catastrophe, we need to face the truth
As long as we don’t have to face the truth about Obama’s eligibility to hold office...
That would apparently be worse than facing the truth about our debt.
Too bad we cannot see the forest because of the trees.
Liberalism, as we have known it in the US, is over. The money is gone, and it is not coming back.
Many don't realize it yet, and it will get very ugly when they finally do, but this outcome has been inevitable for years now.
“You don’t work, you don’t eat.”
There was a time when even the communists believed this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdrlT8FIATM
the “journalists” here are for the most part card carrying libs and sway with the wind of popular opinion.
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Actually they are primary culprits in trying to drive popular opinion - right off of the cliff.
Agree about the article. Very observant and well written.
God have mercy.
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Too bad we cannot see the forest because of the trees.
That about sums it up.
The welfare state is collapsing. The battle will be between those who want to keep it going a little while longer while it is in its death throes even if it means taxing us into oblivion and stripping away our national security funding and those that want to return to capitalism and individual liberty. With so many dependent on the welfare state now, it is going to be a tough and long struggle.
The editors at the Telegraph may understand this, but you won’t find anyone at the Guardian accepting something like this for publication.
So you need to be careful about attributing wisdom to “Brits” as a whole.
Great quote Tumblin’ ...worth the price of admission.
2nd Thessalonians 3:10 King James Version (KJV)
“For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.”
I also agree the op-ed piece is brilliantly succinct & cogent. I’ve not heard of such an absurd political phantasm before, a democratic socialist state supported by a capitalist market economy, and now we are well on the way to becoming one.. but probably not any more absurd than a totalitarian dictatorship supported by a capitalist market economy (China).
“I don’t know but I’ve been told, the streets of heaven are lined with gold. Wonder how it could get any worse, maybe if the Russians got there first.” ~Bob Dylan
As it happens, Janet Daley was born in America and moved to the U.K. after college.
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