Now that we have our very own American ‘Zampolitz” political enforcers looking over all of our shoulders, tirelessly searching for the tiniest deviation from what has been ordained as orthodox by the wokerati it looks as if we have our own gulag mini-archipelago. So mini, in fact that it is more of a single island. And mercifully not in Siberia, and the inhabitant prisoners are not being starved and worked to death doing hand labor on massive infrastructure projects. Not yet, anyway.
Big Government
The America Political Chernobyl
The meltdown wasn’t caused by engineers but by the Soviet political system’s dogma.
Nothing enrages my family, friends and colleagues more than when I assert that contemporary US political divisions are the same as those since the beginning of recorded history: ideology, race, and religion, rather than (easily ignored) Trump tweets (or the political spin thereof). So I will proffer that his tweets were divisive in that they challenged Progressive Democratic beliefs regarding these factors, but neither should be accepted on faith if America is to avoid an economic meltdown.
Empires and State Religions
The Soviet System’s accomplishments from Stalin’s time industrialization and WW II, urbanization, restoration and expansion of Imperial Russia, etc., and the space achievements under Khrushchev were so impressive that American intellectuals generally agreed with Khrushchev’s “we will bury you” right up to Chernobyl in 1986. The plant failed because the Soviet system of top-down authority and suppression of the truth forced operators to ignore the inevitable failure and instead follow orders that guaranteed a meltdown.
Gorbachev’s glasnost” (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) in response to the disaster removed the pillars of the Soviet system adherence to beliefs given the status of religious dogma – causing it to collapse, something Austrian economists had considered inevitable. Russia restored the Orthodox Church, but without any historical political legacy based on individual sovereignty, it morphed into a kleptocratic autocracy and a return to Russian Imperialism and military aggression.
Whether or not China discovered America in 1421 (or had a greater Empire than the Incas) it was a mercantilist empire several centuries ahead of the British in scope, science and technology, requiring “tribute” (kowtow) in return for protection and trade. Religion wasn’t an obstacle to entrepreneurial capitalism until Mao replaced de fact religious freedom with communist ideology in the early 20th century. China’s economic liberalization begun in 1978, that eventually led to a flowering of entrepreneurship in China’s attempt to restore and expand its earlier mercantilist empire, was accompanied by some religious freedom. Had political liberalizations followed, China’s demographics a population four and a half times that of the US might have already buried us.
Churchill may not have saved the British empire in the world wars, but the Empire saved his little island nation. At its 1920 peak it controlled about a quarter of the world’s land mass and population. Britain is a protestant Christian nation, which most analysts conclude fosters property rights and capitalism. The Church of England seceded from the Roman Catholic Church to eliminate the sovereignty of the Pope common to European empires at the time. The British legacy of democratic government and individual freedom and responsibility, the cornerstone of a market economy (admittedly at times too crony and mercantilist) is the source of its economic success and that of its former colonies, including the United States.
Uniting church and state elevates political ideology to infallible dogma accepted on faith. The U.S. Founding Fathers, following Britain’s lead, founded a Christian nation that guaranteed individual freedom of religion but forbade the formal establishment of a state religion.
Soviet Socialism Was a Bad Joke; Sanders/Biden Democratic Socialism is a Comical Tragedy
The Soviet era joke “we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us” has been replaced by the Biden joke “they pay us more not to work so we don’t.” Democrats’ complete denial that the refusal to accept job openings is in any way related to their pay to stay home policies is comical. To admit such spending is not only unnecessary but counterproductive represents an existential threat to their Party’s agenda, but to ignore their denial that incentives matter will end in tragedy.
Democratic Socialism isn’t Socialism, It’s a Rent-Seeking Extortion Racket
Socialists promised “to each…” but repressed consumer demand with queues lasting years and often decades. Democratic socialists aren’t socialists in that they don’t promise to work or produce anything. Sopranos’ aficionados recall the high paying “no-show” and the “no-work” union jobs sitting at the construction site in lawn chairs smoking, drinking and playing cards while laughing at the actual exhausted workers. Since incentives don’t matter, democratic socialists believe they can provide higher paying jobs just like the mafia with no loss of production. And, like the mafia’s benevolent political acts such as delivering Thanksgiving turkeys, capitalists will still deliver the goods for them.
Rent-seeking (living off the work of others, generally payback for political bribery and protection) appeared free to the young Bernie Sanders for a few weeks, until his commune threw him out. What do democratic socialists propose in place of a hundred million deaths from Stalin’s Soviet Gulag and Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the scenes of mafia beatings, sometimes fatal, to extort business? They promise to squeeze “big business” with taxes, regulation and threats to match socialist demand with capitalist supply.
Four Views of Government
1–If the king did not, without tiring, inflict punishment on those worthy to be punished, the stronger would roast the weaker, like fish on a spit.
–the laws of Manu, 1500 BC
2–Government is not reason, it is not eloquence,—it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.
–Often attributed to George Washington, although there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that he actually ever said it.
3–The speaker at a meeting, Grant, asks: “What is the prime knowledge acquired by our race? That without the rest is useless? What flame must we guard like vestal virgins?”
Members of the group give various answers: fire, writing, the decimal system, the wheel.
“No,” says Grant, “none of those. They are all important, but they are not the keystone. The greatest invention of mankind is government. It is also the hardest of all. More individualistic than cats, nevertheless we have learned to cooperate more efficiently than ants or bees or termites. Wilder, bloodier, and more deadly than sharks, we have learned to live together as peacefully as lambs. But these things are not easy..”
–from Robert Heinlein’s novel Tunnel in the Sky, in which a group of high school kids are stranded on a planet galaxies away, and have come to accept the idea that they are probably never going to be rescued. After a period of choosing their leader by acclamation, they have now decided to hold a formal election for that purpose.
4–Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.
–Congressman Barney Frank, also Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick, and (in somewhat different form) Barack Obama.
My Assertion: The first three quotes all have elements of truth and provide useful perspectives on the problem of government; the fourth one has no such redeeming value.
(I’ve been thinking about a post along these lines for a while, finally motivated to do it by a discussion at Sarah Hoyt’s blog.)
Your thoughts?
Rise of the Modern American Zampolit
The political commissar (also politruk, Russ: political officer), is the supervisory political officer responsible for the political education (ideology) and organisation, and loyalty to the government of the military…
So it seems that the Biden* administration is going all woke in inflicting Critical Race Theory on the armed forces, with Sec Def Austin’s chosen expert on all matters racial, the somewhat ironically named Bishop Garrison, who appears to see white supremacy under every bunk, now making plans for a cats’ paw contractor to stringently screen the social media accounts of active duty military members on an Ahab-like quest for the elusive Great White Racist.