Thursday, May 3, 2018
Socialism - Ideas So Good, They Had To Be Made Mandatory...
More on Socialists, Idiots, Mental Defects and Democrats:
Don't Claim To Love The U.S.A. While Trying To Make It A Socialist Nation...
Yes, Communism Is Definitely Idealist, And That’s Why It Leads To Mass Murder
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| Ukrainian victims - starved on purpose |
I’ve been puzzling for some time over the continuing hold of Communism on the minds of America’s intellectuals. How could a system fail so completely for so long, in so many different variations, leaving a trail of death and suffering in its wake—and still be regarded as “idealistic”?
The answer is that Communism is “idealist” in the strict philosophical sense. And that’s not a good thing.
I realized this while reading the latest paean to Marx in the New York Times, which has spent the last year struggling mightily to rehabilitate Communism. Previously, I had tried to explain why the Communist dream won’t die by looking at its moral appeal—the desperate urge to cling to the ideal of collectivized selflessness, even when it turns out to look like gulags and starvation. But this latest entry reveals an even deeper explanation: the refusal to adjust one’s ideas in response to reality is itself a crucial foundation of Communism.
I called this new piece a paean to Karl Marx, and that’s not an exaggeration. The title is: “Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!” You see, this Saturday marks 200 years since Marx was born. So Jason Barker, an associate professor of philosophy at a university in South Korea—he might want to take a stroll farther north—congratulates Marx on getting everything so amazingly right.
On May 5, 1818, in the southern German town of Trier, in the picturesque wine-growing region of the Moselle Valley, Karl Marx was born….
Today his legacy would appear to be alive and well. Since the turn of the millennium countless books have appeared, from scholarly works to popular biographies, broadly endorsing Marx’s reading of capitalism and its enduring relevance to our neoliberal age.
In 2002, the French philosopher Alain Badiou declared at a conference I attended in London that Marx had become the philosopher of the middle class. What did he mean? I believe he meant that educated liberal opinion is today more or less unanimous in its agreement that Marx’s basic thesis—that capitalism is driven by a deeply divisive class struggle in which the ruling-class minority appropriates the surplus labor of the working-class majority as profit—is correct.
Here, as I understand it, is the timeline. In 1818, Marx is born. In 2002, a French philosopher declares him to be right. Did, um, anything relevant happen in between those dates? Barker’s answer, incredibly, is “no.” The following is the entirety of what he has to say about the history of Communism in the 20th Century.
The idea of the classless and stateless society would come to define both Marx’s and Engels’s idea of communism, and of course the subsequent and troubled history of the Communist ‘states’ (ironically enough!) that materialized during the 20th century. There is still a great deal to be learned from their disasters, but their philosophical relevance remains doubtful, to say the least.
In the twentieth century, we had states that called themselves “Marxist,” based their economic systems on Marx’s teaching, and made generations of schoolchildren memorize Marx’s writings. Then those systems failed spectacularly, both as economies and as societies compatible with human life and happiness.
They’re still failing, with people starving and in concentration camps today, this moment, as you read this. But move along, nothing to see here. A hundred years of death and destruction has “doubtful philosophical relevance.”
It’s philosophers like this who have doubtful relevance. By “philosophers like this,” I mean something very specific, and ironically it is explained by....
Soros-Funded Group Releases App to Help Illegal Aliens Evade Law Enforcement
A Soros-funded immigrant activist group has developed an app to help illegal aliens evade law enforcement by tipping each other off to law enforcement threats with "one click."
From Judicial Watch:
An open borders group that has benefitted from U.S. taxpayer dollars and is funded by leftwing billionaire George Soros launched a smartphone application to help illegal immigrants avoid federal authorities. The app, Notifica (Notify), is described in a Laredo, Texas news article as a tool to protect immigrants living in the U.S. illegally by utilizing high tech and online social communications. With the click of a button, illegal aliens can alert family, friends and attorneys of encounters with federal authorities. "Immigration agents knocking at the door?" the news story asks. "Now, there's an app for that, too."Here's how the Houston Chronicle describes the app: "Users can prepare a set of automatic messages to alert — with one click — family members, lawyers and others if they, or someone they care about, encounter immigration enforcement authorities."
Translation: tip off other illegals to help them evade capture. You don't need an app to call your family or a Soros-funded lawyer with "one click."
Note, while Gab is banned from Google and Apple's app store for "hate speech," Google and Apple both allow this app in their stores.
Judicial Watch continues:
The group behind the app is called United We Dream, which describes itself as the country's largest immigrant youth-led community. The nonprofit has more than 400,000 members nationwide and claims to "embrace the common struggle of all people of color and stand up against racism, colonialism, colorism, and xenophobia." Among its key projects is winning protections and rights for illegal immigrants, defending against deportation, obtaining education for illegal immigrants and acquiring "justice and liberation" for...
U.S. checks reports three American detainees relocated in North Korea: official
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity on Wednesday, said there was no immediate confirmation of any change in the detainees’ status. Trump administration officials have pressed for their release as a show of goodwill by North Korea before the unprecedented U.S.-North Korea summit expected to take place in late May or early June.
“As everybody is aware, the past Administration has long been asking for three hostages to be released from a North Korean Labor camp, but to no avail. Stay tuned!” Trump said in a Twitter post late on Wednesday.
CNN cited an unnamed source in a report on Thursday as saying the release of the three men was imminent, adding...
Fuck The Boy Scouts...
I was a Cub Scout and a Boy Scout, I have fond memories of these times, I have supported the Boy Scouts in the past, never never again. Adios Cultural Marxist Assholes.
Boy Scouts Nix the Word ‘Boy,’ Showing They No Longer Believe in Masculinity
On Wednesday, the Boy Scouts announced that their signature program known simply as the “Boy Scouts”—which serves ages 10 to 17—will no longer bear the word “boy.” Beginning in February, it will be known as Scouts BCA.
This change comes only months after the Boy Scouts announced girls would be allowed into the program. Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh said they wanted to choose a name that “evokes the past but also conveys the inclusive nature of the program going forward.”
This name change, and the “inclusive” policy change that preceded it, indicates a fundamental shift away from the mindset that first gave rise to the Boy Scouts in the early 20th century. One can’t shake the impression that if the Boy Scouts were starting from scratch, they’d ditch even the acronym “BSA” and go completely gender-neutral.
It’s worth probing that fundamental shift in mindset.
The very existence of Boy Scouts, as separate from Girl Scouts, suggests a belief that boys and girls are fundamentally different, and that some good could be achieved by separating them for certain purposes. Otherwise, we would have simply had the “Scouts.”
The Boy Scouts emerged out of a culture that valued boyhood and girlhood as distinct realities, rooted in maleness and femaleness. Each gender had its own unique set of virtues that our culture sought to cultivate in the next generation.
Those virtues are captured in the Boy Scouts’ 1916 congressional charter, which read:
The purpose of this corporation shall be to promote, through organization and cooperation with other agencies, the ability of boys to do things for themselves and others, to train them in Scoutcraft, and to teach them patriotism, courage, self-reliance, and kindred virtues, using the methods which are now in common use by Boy Scouts.
Courage. Self-reliance. Virtues accessible to all, no doubt, yet which were considered integral to the masculine ideal.
The Girl Scouts came into being just two years after the Boy Scouts. Their motto was even more explicitly tailored to a single gender: to train girls “first as good women, then as good citizens, wives, and mothers.”
If the founders of these organizations believed men and women are essentially the same, and that the same ends could be achieved by mixing Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts together, then again, we would simply have inherited the “Scouts of America.”
But instead, two years after the Boy Scouts were founded, Juliette Gordon Low founded the organization that became the Girl Scouts. Though she took inspiration from...
The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #245
You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,
from the beautiful to the repugnant,
from the mysterious to the familiar.
If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,
you could be inspired, you could be appalled.
This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
You have been warned.
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