Posted on 10/23/2011 1:33:05 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
he Berlin Wall fell twenty-two falls ago. Did the news only now reach the Mediterranean?
Those who cannot identify the present are condemned to repeat the past. Rampant stupidity has that effect on a maxim. George Santayana presumed too much when he mocked people who merely forgot yesterday. We can’t even get today straight.
This year is socialism’s worst since the Berlin Wall fell. Just don’t say it aloud. We aren’t supposed to notice that the same mindset that crippled Budapest, Berlin, and Belgrade beats down Damascus and Athens.
It is Eastern Europe along the Mediterranean. It is 1989 again in 2011. But who recognizes the past’s welcome encroachment upon the present? Who sees Prague and Krakow finally bringing the news to Tunis and Tripoli?
The government we just helped overthrow in North Africa called itself the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. We called it a lot of names, but never that.
The “Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution” was once a darling of American leftists. The Nation, for instance, proclaimed that “all Libyans are now equal under the law” and “no form of racism exists in Libya” upon Qaddafi’s coup. In imitation of Mao’s “Little Red Book” Qaddafi wrote a little “Green Book,” which taught that “land is the private property of none,” “wealth exceeding the satisfaction of one’s needs” must be confiscated, and “the final step is for the new socialist society to reach a stage in which profit and money disappear.”
To say Libyans revolted against Qaddafi’s oppression is another way of saying they revolted against socialism. The world economy is in rough shape. Nowhere is it as rough as it is under state-managed economies. The unrest in the Mediterranean Basin has focused on domineering governments that have micromanaged their economies into the ground.
Socialism happens.
Greeks freeload on free dentistry, child care, eye exams, and university educations. Do you grasp why Greece finds it necessary to freeload on the rest of Europe? Despite a debt-to-GDP-ratio that makes Obama’s America look prudent, Prime Minister George Papandreou’s “austerity” measures have increased state spending by seven percent this year. Is it any wonder that the sick man of Europe is led by the leader of the Panhellenic Socialist Movement and the president of the Socialist International?
The latter organization considered the ruling parties of Egypt and Tunisia members in good standing until earlier this year.
The group called the inability to placate demands for democracy “the dramatic failure of the Egyptian government.” But the Socialist International deciding to oust Hosni Mubarak’s party only after the events of Tahir Square had begun seems a rather “dramatic failure,” too.
Two weeks earlier, the group had cited “extraordinary circumstances” in their decision to expel Tunisia’s ruling party. The decades of oppression didn’t faze the Socialist International. The whole world watching did.
The Syrian thugs exterminating fellow citizens for mere protest are members of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party. Their motto is “unity, liberty, socialism.” There hasn’t been much “unity” or “liberty” in Syria. They are overdosing on the motto’s third component. The control freaks who micromanage wage rates, prices, health care, and banking unsurprisingly seek to control YouTube videos and Facebook postings, too.
Socialism is as much a failure in 2011 as it was in 1989. But its public relations is more successful now than then.
In Egypt, Libya, Greece, Syria, and Tunisia, not one in twenty protesters would say that what they have protested against is socialism. Ditto for America. Occupy Wall Street laments unemployment, debt, and decline. But they don’t identify socialized losses for financiers and automakers, or subsidies for the health insurance industry, as a cause for any of this.
Socialists, in America and abroad, protest against socialism and they don’t even know it. In fact, many protestors demand socialism as they protest its effects. Such cognitive dissonance would not be so rampant if we had correctly labeled the failed regimes upon the Mediterranean.
There is an historic movement sweeping the Mediterranean. But posterity, like the present, is unlikely to note that its targets have been exclusively collectivist regimes.
None dare call it socialism.
bump
Then we’ll just call it ‘collectivism.’
What you are witnessing is the last, predictable, painful, chapter of collectivism.
Margaret Thatcher was right. They have long run out of other people’s money but they still are in denial
There is an obvious reason leftists so easily identify with supposedly benevolent despots of all kinds (regardless of the barbarity of their rule). Socialism is founded upon a public claim to private property; it is ultimately covetous. Whether or not altruism is truly the goal (while being opulently compensated for one's "leadership" and "vision") CONTROL being equivalent to ownership makes all property the province of those in command of the almighty state. Every collectivist is a would-be king. No wonder they flock to said would-be deliverers in impoverished hordes.
Isn’t Islam just a version of socialism?
Libyan leader promises to uphold Islamic law
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2796800/posts
With as much in bed as this administration is in bed with Solar Energy, George Soros, General Electric, and the big Banks.
I would have to say we are leaning more to being a Fascist state. Just look at all of the countries we have invaded. Only thing is that Fascism is supposed to work better economically than this.
Oh yeah pick out the Jews (OWS) and go after them. That too is more Fascism than the other ism's.
The one thing we know there seems to be less and less of Americanism.
Power lusting dictators prefer socialism because it is the economic system that is compatible with tyranny and totalitarianism, and dictators can attempt to justify it in the name of economic planning and equality, and the people will believe him and accept it and his rule.
Stalin killed more Jews than any Fascist regime.
bump
For an ideology supposedly on the wane, socialism has made remarkable gains in America the last 30 years, especially in the last 33 months.
The US increasingly has a system of crony capitalism, aka state-capitalism, aka corporatism. It’s all socialism just the same.
So what is the difference between socialism and fascism?
I say very little.
Yup, there’s no effective difference between them.
The essential distinction is whether one believes in free markets vs. government intervention. Any form of government meddling in the markets = socialism.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.