May 7, 2024

No form of government is perfect; all are corrupt.  But I do believe that capitalism partnered with some form of democracy offers the best possibilities.  Of course, we do not have capitalism in the West today.  We have heavily taxed welfare redistributing socialism.  Personally, I think welfare should be limited and temporary – and that if one accepts it, one should give up the right to vote – because otherwise, those on handouts will always strangulate the system by voting for ever increasing handouts.  Communism, in a pure, ideal form, is just an extreme version in which there would be no Makers left for the Takers to steal from, because if you remove the incentives for hard work, very few will work hard just because they are altruistic or they love their job.  The failures of communism are obvious in Russia and China today, both run by wealthy oligarchs benefiting from capitalism…

Douglas Murray, author of The Strange Death of Europe, recently wrote this article in The National Review:

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One Hundred Years of Evil

The inextinguishable allure of Communism

If there is one line we surely will never hear uttered, even in these times, it is any variant of this statement: “I grant that the Nazis committed excesses, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t something to be said for Fascism.”

“While there certainly are groupuscules of neo-Nazis around, they do not get a polite reception on campuses, let alone tenure. Watered-down versions of Fascism do not emerge in the manifestos of mainstream political parties in the West. No student is ever seen sporting a T-shirt with a chic Reinhard Heydrich likeness emblazoned across the front.

If the bacillus of Fascism is never dormant, then at least we appear to have retained significant stockpiles of societal antibiotics with which to counter it. It is unlikely that Richard Spencer will address the Conservative Political Action Conference anytime soon. Unlikely that there will be celebratory centennials for Mussolini’s rise to power. And less likely still (despite the cries to the contrary of professional anti-Fascists, who need Fascists for business purposes) that anyone dreaming of a fairer Fascism will reach the White House in any coming electoral cycle….”

Read more at: https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2017-10-30-0100/russian-revolution-100-years-evil

Communism is trendy today, especially among the young, among “progressive” Western Europeans (not so much in Eastern Europe where they understand its failings…)  To a lesser degree socialism and communism are trendy in America, especially among the young and the poor, all too willing to see the wrongs of capitalism greed righted by seizing and redistributing the wealth.  There seems to be a latent desire to want to punish success and reward failure.  Of course, you get more of whatever behavior you reward.  I wonder what more communism would lead to…

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