Show Me The Pesos And Other Leftist Economic Policies

“Show me the money.”

That loaded expression has surfaced as the mantra for a generation, but not for the reason many people think, because in fact, “show me the money” is the embodiment of part of the extremes of either side of the the value system that is our own.

The center of conservative ideology revolves around morality and ideas. Behavior, responsibility and accountability are the foundations of society.

The center of leftist (as opposed to classical liberal) ideology revolves around wealth- or rather, the redistribution of wealth. As far as leftists are concerned, responsibility and accountability are one way street. Government and the approved ideologues are responsible and to held accountable for the redistribution of wealth. Further, leftist ideologies abhor restraints on behavior. There are no behaviors that are unacceptable- none. The only constraints are the claimed justification of those behaviors. Some are acceptable, some are not. To kill a political/religious opponent in the name of leftist ideologies is good. To kill defending oneself from those ideologies is bad.

Leftist believe that consuming wealth is the same as creating wealth. They also believe that a consumer society is the same kind of society that facilitates the creation of wealth. To that end, those to whom redistributed wealth is apportioned, are good. Those who create the wealth, are bad. That in a nutshell, is the definition of populism- a government says ‘We will take care of you, cradle to grave. We will give you what we take from others.’

Leftists see the redistribution of wealth and materialism as an expression of values. That is why they believe they can buy their way out of any confrontation of evil. They cannot accept the truth that evil is defeated by defending and insisting upon a set of values and behaviors from everyone and standing firm.

Leftists do not want to acknowledge that evil is defeated by values and not by sharing wealth. That is why leftists are comfortable with taking the sides and defending some of the most dysfunctional and despicable tyrants to be found anywhere. They believe that their ‘enlightened’ ideas of wealth distribution will change pathological behaviors.

For example, they believe that Arab misogyny, homophobia and racist hate will abate, once there is a ‘redistribution’ of wealth (and ideological values) from the west. In the event that doesn’t happen, leftists believe they and their ‘values’ will be excluded from persecution. After all, they have proved themselves to be a useful part of the ’cause.’ The dysfunctional Arab world leadership is only too happy to keep this generation of ‘useful idiots’ under the ether.

One might be tempted compare the leftists of today  of today to the Jews of prewar Germany, blind to the horror and the inferno that was about to engulf the world.

The Nazi era German Jews desperately wanted to believe that German racist ideologies were really expressions of political rjetoric. The German volk were a civilized lot, cultured and well educated. The social, cultural and political elite, those who filled the Berlin salons with progressive ideas and discussions that centered around sophisticated philosophy, art, literature  and the new kultur would in the end, never allow for such brutality. They would never turn their backs on the persecution and wholesale slaughter, predicated on racialism.

We all know how that turned out.

Leftists today believe that in the end, the redistribution of wealth, will ‘enlighten’ the tyrannies they support and bring them into line with their own relativism, multicultural and a value system that honors nothing but the self. Unlike the Jews of prewar Germany, the left are supporting regimes that already have a track record of evil. The Nazis attempted to hide and deny their evil- the darlings of the left, the Arab world, cannot be bothered. The left cannot say they knew nothing of the misogyny, racism and bigotry, because in fact, those behaviors are in plain view. Nevertheless, they choose to support and defend the tyrannies.

Leftists have failed women because they have chosen to embrace regimes and causes that oppress and betray women. Leftists have failed the gay community because they will ‘out’ a gay person if and when it suits their needs.

The leftist dance is reminiscent of the Nazi era, with German government officials denying their atrocities by taking Red Cross workers to ’show camps’ where Jews and other minorities were portrayed as ‘happy guests’ of Reich generosity and largesse, even as the gas chamber and ovens were going at full tilt just down the road.
Why the leftists go to extremes to defend evil isn’t hard to understand.

There is a phenomena of the self hating Jew, an individual who denies his or her own identity, culture and faith, and seeks to identify and support those who make no secret of their own pathological agendas, directed against Jews.

The pathology of the self hating Jew is not new. Jews were attracted to communism and socialism, because someone said, “We are all equal. You are a comrade.” For the first time, Jews believed they were to be ‘free.’ After centuries of relentless oppression the idea was intoxicating.

After the horrors of the Second World War were made clear, there were a whole sub culture of Jews, even the children of Holocaust survivors that migrated to the self hating brigades. Why? Because those Jews believed that if they could be unlike the Jews (and more like their oppressors), then no one would come for them. They would be safe and secure. Surely the oppressors would see there were ‘good Jews’ too, noted just evil and hated Jews.

The same is true today of leftists (Jews included) who believe that siding with the racist, bigoted and dysfunctional oppressors might save them from the destiny of those their new friends promise. They are the Kapos of this generation, willing to sacrifice their own so as to save themselves.

Prewar German Jews could at least hope against hope that there would be no Holocaust.  Leftists of today cannot argue ignorance.

Leftists today hate freedom and democracy because those ideas have created the environment for success. Assistant Village Idiot recently noted in a comment that Arabs don’t hate us because we have succeeded, but rather, because they have failed. The same is true for the leftists- their burning hatred of democracy stems from their failure to create a single instance of a functioning society that isn’t a least a generation behind our own.  Not even the redistribution of wealth can make up for the values and freedom that create an environment that allows for the creation of wealth.

For the left, it is the appearance that becomes the brass ring. Iran, like North Korea, wants the ‘materialism’ of nuclear technology so that they might be perceived as equals. They do not understand that materialism has nothing to do values. Free western nations can easily have more in common with nations that share our values than with nations who enrich uranium.

Appearance is not a substitute for substance. Religious garb is often spoken of as a sign of religiosity that must be respected, as if appearance alone were to be regarded as sacred. When it is all said and done, religiosity is not measured by what goes on the head, but rather, what goes in the head. That ‘magnificent’ Mohammed Atta spent the the night of September 10, 2001 in a strip club, paying for lap dances with a Quran at his side. So much for his religiosity.

The left will support the redistribution of ‘nuclear wealth’ to unstable totalitarian regimes that threaten their neighbors and other- especially if they hate American and western freedoms.  In their mind, that gives these regimes the appearance of equality with the west. The believe that appearance of equality, precludes us from noting their hypocrisy and their failures.

(On the other hand, the very suggestion that a non nuclear western and democratic nation go nuclear is sure to set the leftists off into a wild frenzy.)

Of course, it is only by managing behavior of those who threaten us or our allies that we can ensure our security. When values and beliefs are shared, we do not need to ‘manage’ behavior. We do  not need to manage our relationships with other free nations because free and democratic nations do not go to war with each other. Free and democratic nations do not need to institutionalize racism, bigotry and religious hate.

In the end, it is not the redistribution of wealth that will ensure our security. Rather, it is the redistribution of principles, values and beliefs of free nations that will make all the difference.

Portions of this post have been previously published.

The Path To Nowhere

The underpinning of every society is imitation and conformity. We agree to established and accepted values and conventions, and we live our lives according to those values and conventions. What we teach our children serves to ensure not only to establish their successes, but also to to ensure the continuity of our society and culture. Even the much progressive and non conformist ‘art world’ is really about imitation and conformity. For every Monet and Picasso there are a thousand imitators, each proudly proclaiming to be a pillar of whatever the ‘new school’ of that time might be.

There are ‘variations on theme.’ Each culture and society teach their own history and the cultural influence that are unique to them. It is also notable that cultures and societies that are distinguished by enshrined democratic principles, have learned to coexist with each other and to eschew violence, no matter the disagreement.

Those societies and cultures have learned for most part, if left alone to pursue his own dreams rather than the dreams of orthodox ideologues, man and society will do just fine. As we have noted many times, free and democratic nations do not make war upon each other, because in the end, citizens of free and democratic nations have more in common than the issues that divide them. There aren’t many calls from the most determined European leftists to mobilize and take up arms against ‘les maudits’ Amercaines.‘

It is also very true that are accepted values and conventions in most western and many Asian societies and cultures (including Asian Muslim nations), are clearly not accepted by many, if not most, Arab world societies and cultures.

The cultures and values of a nation or society are determined by the leadership of that nation or society. As we have noted, the Arab world has been the incubator for much dysfunction. Islam birthed a radicalized version of itself and became contaminated with radicalization because values of dysfunctional leaders were forced on the religion. That radicalization was nurtured because it became clear as the 20th century drew to a close that the ummah in the Arab world and elsewhere, would not tolerate their marginalization from the rest of the world. They too, were entitled to a part of the future.

Dysfunctional leaders, suddenly embraced a religion they had rejected for years and proceeded to reshape that religion into something that would legitimize their own dysfunction and evil ideologies. Aided by ‘religious leaders’ who were in fact no more than paid state employees, Islam began a transformation. The ‘radical Islam’ we see today is not a ‘religious renaissance.’ The violence and anger we see on our TV screens is not an expression of Islam. What we see is a carefully crafted reworking and redefinition of Islam, brought about by evil and dysfunctional leaders that have made those distortions a part of Arab culture.

Whereas Islam was once regarded a numbing ‘opiate’ in the Arab world, the regions dysfunctional leaders have created a cancer, radical Islam. That cancer was designed to poison not only their own societies but to ensure that the west would isolate themselves from the Arab world- and thus, western values of freedom and democracy would be kept at bay. The result would be Arab world leaders unafraid of western intervention and guarantee an unimpeded iron grip.

In a recent post, This Says It All, Dr Sanity quotes Victor Davis Hanson:

Nothing was more evident of the moral impoverishment of the Palestinians than their collective lamentation over the fate of this mass killer of the Kurds and Arabs. We gave the Palestinian Authority hundreds of millions of dollars for housing, schools, and security and they hate us; Saddam gave them a few thousand dollars as bounty for suicide murderers and they loved him.

In the Arab world, support for the Palestinians is really a symptom- and artificial one at that, designed to focus attention away from the dysfunctional political and religious leaders (bought and paid for) that really ails Arab society.

Every student or practitioner of any of the psychological disciplines will tell you that pathologies- especially obsessions, if left unchecked, will spread.

In the dysfunctional Arab world, there is an is the absolute belief that the conflict with Israel and western ideals is what drives their pathology, and not the other way around. In the real world, it is pathology that drives conflict. In essence, the Arab world is trying to explain it’s behavior in the court of world opinion by saying, ‘Your honor, the conflict started when the Israelis and world democracies resisted and hit back after we announced our intention to destroy them and then attacked and hit them.‘

Of course, the conflict with Israel and the west has nothing to do with Arab world behaviors. Even if Israel and the American presence in the region were gone tomorrow, there would not be much difference in the region.

Neither America or Israel had anything to do with Saddam’s record of evil against other Muslims. Iraqis didn’t use their weapons of mass destruction against hated Jews or westerners. Those WMD’s were developed because of choices made by Saddam. He developed and used those WMD’s against fellow Muslims during the Iran-Iraq War, and delighted withe the results, used them again against fellow Iraqis. The poison-gas attack against Kurds in Halabja in 1988. The Kurds did not have WMD’s at their disposal and they were no military threat to Saddam.

The UN generated Duelfer Report made clear the nature and reason for theIraqi nuclear program. The reports authors concluded that “Iran was the pre-eminent motivator of this policy. All senior-level Iraqi officials considered Iran to be Iraq’s principal enemy in the region. The wish to balance Israel and acquire status and influence in the Arab world were also considerations, but secondary.”

Neither America or Israel are responsible for the economic malaise in countries blessed with obscene wealth.

Muammar Qaddafi is not a creation of America or Israel, any more than are the corrupt mullahs of Iran.

Neither America or Israel are responsible for the pitiful state of Arab world educational levels, among the lowest in the world.

Corrupt judiciaries, limitations on free speech and expression and religious bigotry are not the result of Americans or Israelis.

Does anyone really believe that if Israel did not exist (and consequently, no American alliance with the region’s only real democracy) that there would be a Pan Muslim state that stretched from North Africa to Syria and Pakistan and on to Indonesia? Would the Arab world be a far more advanced culture and society?

Does anyone believe that had the Arab armies been successful in the 1967 war ( a declared war of annihilation) they started, that Egypt, Jordan and Syria would have ceded the land to establish a new ‘Palestine’? (in fact, the only thing that united those three nations was a hatred (and fear, to some extent) of Arafat. While they were not afraid of him from a military standpoint, they were afraid of his influence in the region- and influence that might undermine heir own.

Had the Arab nations defeated Israel in 1967, the Palestinians would still be living in third world conditions. If the desire for Palestinian statehood were a real aspiration, does anyone believe that legions of suicide bombers today would be dispatched to Cairo, Damascus and Amman? Or is that phenomena acceptable because terror directed against non Muslims is acceptable (recall the horror of the wedding bombing in Amman and the resulting shock and revulsion).

Of course, waiting in the wings is the Arab world’s ‘deal with the devil.’ The dysfunctional leaders of the Arab world are making a tempting offer to the west; offer up Israel as a sacrifice to us and the specter of terror will disappear. And just who is making those promises? Some of the most dysfunctional- and evil leaders, in the history of mankind. Given the treatment of citizens and minorities in these dysfunctional regimes, it becomes clear that promises  made by the leaders of these regimes are along the lines of Nazi Germany’s non aggression treaties and agreements with Chamberlain and Molotov.

Arab hatred of Jews and Israel is in no small measure due to the real and tangible success of Zionism (see this and Birth Of Nation, A Garden Blooms) That ideology has been far more successful than Pan Arabism or Baathism. That truth is not lost on the Arab world. Their own failures are magnified by Israel’s real and undeniable successes, as seen in the mirror of their own failures, every day.

When it’s all said and done, the most volatile regional issues are religious in nature because the dysfunctional leaders of these dysfunctional states have made it that way.

The most horrible of crimes in Algeria, including the rape and dismemberment of children, were the result of purported religious dedication.

The civil war in Lebanon ended after 14 years of bloodshed, with no real resolution between the Christian and Muslim communities there.

Egyptian discrimination against the Copts went from a generations long simmer to a violent boil in the 1990’s and continues on today.

Saddam made no secret of his hate in his excesses against the Shia and Kurds, resulting in over a million deaths.

Former Syrian president Hafez Assad had 20,000-30,000 people (mostly members of the Muslim Brotherhood) slaughtered in Hama and many other, lesser known massacres.

In Saudi Arabia, the royal family wahhabists have unleashed a kind of perverted fundamentalism in their own country and they have paid to sponsor more of the same around the world.

A British schoolteacher was sentenced to 15 days imprisonment because she allowed a teddy bear to be called  ‘Mohammed.’ Religious figures in Sudan calling for death and Sudanese courts ‘generously’ spared the 55 year old from 40 lashes.

All the while and below most western radar, a bitter struggle is playing out- the fundamentalist Muslims vs the moderate and/or more secular Muslims. There are also the real class struggle issues and tensions between millions of poor and disenfranchised Muslims versus the Arab world elite and privileged.

None of these realities have anything to do with Israel, Jews, America, or Christians.

It is only the deliberate and artificial focus on Israel and the Palestinians as a pretext for Arab dysfunction that keeps the Arab world from falling into a countdown of self destruction. Without those magnified, out of proportion artificial distractions designed to whip Arab frustrations into a frenzy, repelete with calls to slaughter, the Arab world would implode upon itself.

Of course, Israel is not a regional observer only. The continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the hardships endured by the Palestinians as a result of the occupation are a tragic, if necessary reality until real peace emerges. The Israeli psyche and soul have been severely tested. Nevertheless, as long as the Arab world undermines and sabotages real peace efforts with hate, bigotry, threats of annihilation and terror, the status quo will remain.

The Arabs are a proud people, with many kind and generous virtues. Anyone who has experienced Arab hospitality knows just how true that is. In quiet and small of the night, they know who their real oppressors are. They also know that Islamic ‘reform’ efforts are really restoration efforts. The Arab world needs to institute political reform before there can be religious restoration to the Islam that preceded the Islam crafted by dysfunctional Arab tyrants.

They know these things of course. They must now choose the values and conventions they will adopt and imitate. They can choose the road to nowhere, as laid out for them by their tyrants and despots that lead the nations in which they live.

As the wall that divided Europe collapsed, there was never really a question as to the values and conventions the people would choose. Time and time again, we have witnessed the truth that when given a chance, people will choose freedom over tyranny.

It is true that the opportunity for the liberation from tyranny and immediate freedom in the Arab world does not yet exist at the moment. Nevertheless, that does not preclude the Arab world from choosing the values and conventions they will adopt as their own. We can only hope they choose a seat at the table of free and civilized nations.

Portions of this post have been previously published