Posted on 12/26/2013 4:13:49 AM PST by IbJensen
American progressives like to think of their country as backward and reactionary compared to Europe. And they have never been more right than now when Europe and the rest of the First World have gone right while America under Obama has been left back.
Recently Australia, Japan and Norway welcomed in conservative governments. Tony Abbott, Australia’s new prime minister, is a former heavyweight boxer who attended Oxford and is putting a spoke in the wheel of the Global Warming ecohoax. Japan is casting off its pacifism and standing up to the People’s Republic of China and Norway gave its left-wing government the boot and moved in “Iron Erma” in a coalition with the libertarian Progress Party which opposes taxes and immigration and supports free enterprise.
Australia, Japan and Norway are not outliers. The majority of First World countries now have conservative governments.
Canada has embraced a patriotic foreign policy and energy exploration under Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his conservative Likud party have continued to move Israel’s economy toward free enterprise. And even in the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron, for all his follies, is a conservative, even if he is more McCain than DeMint, and has pushed for deregulation and welfare reform.
Sweden’s center-right coalition government has won re-election for the first time in a century. Norway and Sweden, countries that Americans used to consider the very embodiments of Socialism, now both have conservative governments.
In Germany, Angela Merkel will serve a third term as chancellor. The Netherlands still has a conservative government which has come out against multiculturalism and the welfare state.
In Spain, the center-right People’s Party won the biggest majority of any party in three decades and is projected to win reelection. In Poland, the center-right Civic Platform continues to govern. In Greece, it’s the center-right New Democracy. In Portugal, it’s the Social Democratic Party and the People’s Party (somewhat on the right, despite their names). In Iceland, it’s the conservative Independence Party and the Progressive Party (also on the right, despite its name.)
Even Europe’s left-wing parties have had to adapt to the new economic environment. Denmark’s Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons, has suffered a severe setback in municipal elections and is scrambling to hold her left-wing government together. And even Thorning-Schmidt only made it this far by embracing welfare reform, cutting corporate taxes and slashing unemployment benefits.
The rule of the radical left in the United States is very much an outlier in the rest of the First World where conservative and center-right parties predominate. The conventional First World response to the economic crisis has been to cut spending and reform welfare, while in the United States has spent more money than ever before and expanded welfare.
Much of Europe now favors less federalism and less immigration. The United States has expanded its federal government dramatically and both Democratic and Republican leaders support amnesty for illegal aliens at a time when immigration is politically toxic everywhere else.
The American left insists that historical inevitability is on its side, but it has lost nearly everywhere else.
America stands alone under the rule of the left, in uncontrolled spending, uncontrolled immigration and the iron hand of the welfare state.
America’s massive wealth and resources have allowed the left to act as if it could borrow against them indefinitely to finance its big government schemes. Smaller countries don’t have the luxury of running up infinite debts and not worrying about how they will be paid back or pretending that impossible rates of economic growth will compensate for trillion dollar deficits.
America is the left’s economic fantasyland because it has so much that they imagine that it will take a long time to bankrupt.
Europe is dominated by parliamentary democracies where it would have been difficult for an executive to stay in office on popularity and racial guilt after his actual policies had been completely discredited. In a parliamentary democracy, the 2010 midterm elections wouldn’t have just meant a Republican House of Representatives, but would have booted Obama out of the White House.
Conservatives denounce populist politics in America, but it’s actually the remnants of the system that safeguards political power from populist elections that has kept the Senate and the White House in the hands of the left while turning over the House of Representatives to the Republicans creating a crisis in which the populist body could do nothing, while Obama unilaterally ushered in an imperial presidency.
Another major difference is that America has a higher percentage of minorities than most other First World countries. In many First World nations, the left has assembled minorities into a welfare coalition. But such a coalition is much more potent in the United States because of demographics.
Finally, there is the Obama factor.
Hillary Clinton would probably have lost in 2012. Most Democratic hacks would have. But the cult of personality built around Obama by the news and entertainment industry has been very hard to breach. Only the “If you like your health plan” lie has finally put a serious dent in his likability and trust ratings.
Obama is something unique. He’s the end product of a venture by liberal billionaires from the financial and tech sectors to build a radical Trojan horse politician. They invested a great deal of money into their project and the dividends have been huge. No other First World country has been victimized by such a calculated scheme or had so many resources invested in hijacking its democracy.
Some 6 billion dollars were raised and spent in the 2012 election. Those are astronomical amounts of money and they are probably only the tip of the iceberg. Beating that kind of spending isn’t easy.
While the rest of the First World moves on, America remains trapped in the defunct economic and political grip of the left. After dedicating enormous resources to taking over the Democratic Party and then the country, the left has turned the United States of America into its Soviet Union, a country out of time, its economy and society wracked by the discredited political and economic theories of the left.
America's financial situation exponentially is much worse than that of the City of Detroit. Our nation is in a financial hole that is unrecoverable.
We all started down the path to the “nanny state” when laws were not enforced to the fullest extent.
When we (the people) were indoctrinated by the liberal news and lying politicians that people always had some type of social malady that caused them to violate the laws of society.
I call it “the little Johnny theory” whereby no matter what the law is, along with the fact that little Johnny knew perfectly well that he was breaking the law, there was always some liberal shouting that we were being too harsh in his punishment. It didn’t matter if it were a home rule, state or federal rule, or any rule...it was never Johnny’s fault.
This syndrome accelerated drastically in the mid to late 60’s and now all laws (the Constitution too) are never enforced as written due to the blameless society we have created.
We have created a society in which the work ethic has mainly been destroyed, children are not allowed to work and gain experiences that will fuel their future advancements, criminals are coddled, politicians are elected solely on platforms that give “free stuff” and special rights to different colored skinned people while the white race is forced to pay for it in both money and liberty....and the list goes on and on and on.
This is not the America of the 50’s and we have come to the Rubicon of freedom and liberty. The next election in 2014 will determine whether we “sink or swim” in the waters of freedom, liberty, and life under the original Constitution our country was founded upon...not the new “living Constitution” based upon feelings and international laws.
Once we cross that river there is no turning back.
"Conservative" in those countries is someone like Michael Dukakis.
Even Michael Dukakis is to the right of the Democrat cabal that we currently have in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
bump
What else is new. Jesus was born and homosexuals and pedophiles ruled. America is in grips with evil.
I hope we’ll begin to tack back to the right in 2014 with a majority in the senate.
It might; if they had a Leader.
We all started down the path to the “nanny state” when laws were not enforced to the fullest extent.
When we (the people) were indoctrinated by the liberal news and lying politicians that people always had some type of social malady that caused them to violate the laws of society.
I call it “the little Johnny theory” whereby no matter what the law is, along with the fact that little Johnny knew perfectly well that he was breaking the law, there was always some liberal shouting that we were being too harsh in his punishment. It didn’t matter if it were a home rule, state or federal rule, or any rule...it was never Johnny’s fault.
You have some very good points and for the most part I agree with them. For myself though I think the big turning point was the first ‘Gas Crunch’ and the asinine rule of ‘Drive 55’ as the national speed limit.
Why that particular instance is important I think is because it made nearly every adult in the U.S. a law breaker nearly everyday they drove to work. And it’s just a small thing too, but like a small stone can case an avalanche a bad law can cause a nation to start ignoring other laws and it just gets bigger and bigger.
And so here we are today...
An America a 1950’s or 60’s time traveler would barely comprehend and wonder ‘How did this all happen?’
When the diagnosis is SIN; NO political 'medicine' is going to cure the patient.
America = corporate cronyism run a muck. With the worst politicians you can buy.
Greenfield is brilliant, as always, in this article, typically correct in all of his analyses, and never more so than in his statement above. The left has turned this country into a western version of the Soviet Union, without the violence against its people. So far.
“Some 6 billion dollars were raised and spent in the 2012 election. Those are astronomical amounts of money and they are probably only the tip of the iceberg. Beating that kind of spending isn’t easy.”
It goes beyond “not easy.” Try “not possible.” The uniparty is completely entrenched and will not be dislodged by an electoral system that they control.
I hope we can elect conservatives in 2014 and cast away Marxism in 2016 by electing someone like Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz or one of our govenors, like Scott or Nikki.
Tony Abbott is a hero in the fight against the Climate Change hoax!
I hope the US gets some politicians that are are bright as he is on this topic.
"Sinful" behavior is much more prevalent in Europe than the USA, yet they are "making the turn" in the right direction.
A more likely explanation is that it took longer to move an entity the size of the USA "leftward", so it will naturally take a bit longer to re-align "rightward", and that the USA started that "leftward" turn much later than Europe.
Fat chance unless we get a Tea Party candidate that is far right and uncompromising on his principles.
Right. This will be this nation’s last chance to get a strong right-wing candidate that will extract this poor nation from the sink hole.
It took a Republicrat to edict the 55 mph limit and another Republicrat to sign the Chinese light bulb into law.
How I loathe the lefties and what they are doing to America.
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.