Revolutionary Conservatism – Part 1

Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, 16 January 2005 01:02.

Yesterday morning, when I started up my PC and opened OE, I found there a veritable barrage of mail from just one correspondent. Let me say at once that he is no low-life spammer. He is a currently self-absented reader and commenter and, to be sure, an interesting and determined fellow. Although the subject matter of his e-mails was diverse there was, it must be said, a common thread running through them. As threads go, some might consider it, on occasion, overly common. No doubt, it will re-appear eventually on this page. But I am not going to short-circuit that process now. Anyway, one of the orphaned communications spoke of something more interesting to me - not Jewry but Conservatism, and dead Conservatism at that.

So, with thanks to Wintermute for this link to a seemingly funereal but, in the end, uplifting OQ article by the late John Attarian I am going to kick around a few Conservative notions and notions of Conservatism – not at all the same thing - and, hopefully, spark off some interesting comment. I shall do so in two parts. This first one will commend realism and try to sketch out what that might amount to.

That confection of hot- and cold-button issues that people think of as Conservatism – small government, the championing of the individual, laissez-faire economics, a belief in material progress, the instinct for social stability, the preservation of the family and of law and order and, on the American right at least, of faith – governs society nowhere in the Western World. Liberalism in all its myriad gradations and guises is sovereign and all-pervasive. It’s no exaggeration to say that we live entirely liberal lives. No matter how much we protest as Conservatives all those pathologies we see about us we cannot shut out the formative impact of public policy. It is liberal public policy, guided by liberal values and effected within a liberal zeitgeist. Indeed, to a disturbing degree we are Conservative only inside our skulls. And we are often wrong about that.

This is the first truth, this self-doubt, which those of a Conservative disposition must acknowledge if we are to think seriously about a real Conservative alternative to liberalism … that is, whether there can be one and what it might look like. Frankly, we have to cut the crap.

We have also to understand that when a living thing is reduced to its constituent parts it is robbed of its vital spirit. It is a collection of dry bones. That Conservatism which grew organically out of the end of English medievalism and came into full bloom with Pitt the Younger actually disappeared from the world with the retirement of Salisbury in 1902. Attarian thinks it died. I think it became a disembodied spirit. Either way, today we can look around and find most if not all of the bones. We can and do meld them together into political parties, give them a name with “Conservative” in it, make speeches, dream of power and societal and national salvation … But all that is only cosmetic. The reality is that the great, modern declension of Western Man which IS liberalism has proven irresistible to the stout bone-wielders of the right. It isn’t working for us and it will not work. Only a whole and living philosophy can impart to the political process all that we wish to. That is the second unpleasant medicinal dose every Conservative – or, more accurately, “Conservative” - must swallow.

There is yet a third. The ubiquity of liberal philosophies, their complete command of the arena, means that every space for thinking is filled, so to speak. Of course, I accept that libertarians will not wish to be taken as one with Marxists or National Socialists. Neither, indeed, will modern-day white racial nationalists. But I am afraid it is so. The case for the unity of liberalism has been argued with great eloquence on his own sites and here by Mark and, on the MR comment threads, by Matt and John S.Bolton. I shan’t dwell on it again now, except to confirm that it is a unity of end, not means. All philosophies which place freedom, any freedom, above all else and seek to deliver men to it by socio-political action grow from the same root and tend to the same end. The true political polarity is Conservatism>liberalism. There is nothing else. And Attarian thinks Conservatism is dead, God help us!

So quite a weight rests on the shoulders of the poor, wee Conservative. Change, meaning changing the liberal world in toto, can come from no other quarter.

This third Conservative thought, this understanding of the historical burden, occasions a fourth and final shock to the system. Liberalism is not alone in kicking and cajoling Western Man towards his racial and cultural end. There are two other forces which approximate to liberalism in effect and which are as impossible to out as any damned liberal spot. They are capitalism and democracy. Capitalism as an engine of prosperity is a good. But it is not particularly pretty. It is founded on the principles of paid slavery and freedom through greed. With the defeat of Soviet communism its hegemony has gone global with consequences that are wholly un-Conservative. It has, essentially, become a second force for liberalism – and left-liberalism at that. Somehow it has to be put back in its box. Ideas on a postcard ...

And then there is that sacred artifact of the modern political age, democracy. Never mind one-man-one-vote, there is no form of democracy which is explicitly Conservative. Britain acquired “OMOV” in full only in 1918. There has not been a truly Conservative option – a living Conservatism - put before an “OMOV” electorate in Britain. I doubt if there has anywhere in the world. There is a respectable argument to be made to the effect that the self-interest of the masses will always be socially progressive. It has, after all, been so till now. The saving grace for Conservatives is that the definition of self-interest can change and, given the demographic projections for all the homelands of Western Man, will likely do just that.

Even so, for those such as us who, in our imaginings, would sweep away liberalism that is little cause for rejoicing. If the public mind does indeed focus on racial dispossession, it will not do so soon. It would require the provocation of extremis, and that means going very close - perhaps too close - to the edge of the abyss. Conservatives have no choice in the matter, of course. We have to fight. But it behoves us to stand in awe of the sheer magnitude of the task. Anything else would lack humility and, anyway, be quite unrealistic.

Tags: Conservatism

Comments:

Posted by Geoff Beck on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 03:20 | #

I’ve tried to form an essay on the topic above, but been unable to complete it.

I’ve felt the entire institutional framework of the last 500 years ought to scraped: reformation, state, universities, and all the ideologies. Frankly, I don’t know what comes next. One cannot plan a new civilization. If in a fit of rage if we were to burn down all the dross of the last 500 years, then I ask, what do we replace it with? Perhaps in even greater philistinism might follow, or naked savagery.

I no longer understand what conservatism is. Those who claim the title of “Conservative”, are conserving nothing I want saved, and what they save I don’t want conserved.

I’ve often thought “lets hand the whole thing over to Pinochet or Franco and let him dump the rubbish in the ocean”. But, perhaps, I too, might be rubbed-out - its a risk.

All the attempts to reform and begin again, after 1914, all has failed. The slide to mediocrity continues. Nothing seems to last and each new movement is cannabalized by yet another novelty. Endless ideologies & methodologies followed by the antithesis: communism, anti-communism; fascism, anti-fascism; nature vs. nuture; communitarianism, anti-communitarianism; modernism, post-modernism, anti-modernism…

Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass

T.S. Eliot

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 15:00 | #

John I’m certain I’ve read online recently that according to new studies by economists, outsourcing of jobs has depressed domestic wages and incomes. (It might have been Samuelson who confirmed it, who is a prominent U.S. economist.) I’ll just throw that into the discussion without being able to cite the source at the moment, since you wax so bold in denying it—I didn’t save the source but I’ll look for it.

Posted by Cathal Copeland on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 16:25 | #

John, perhaps you’re being just a tad unfair.

Attarian got his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan in 1984. Is Michigan a diploma mill? His obituary also states that he has “published essays, articles and book reviews in Modern Age, Crisis, National Review, Reason, The Social Critic, The Freeman, Chronicles, The Human Life Review, Culture Wars, The University Bookman, The Wall Street Journal…”

Attarian’s claim that outsourcing jobs has depressed American wages may well be false, but to refute one argument in a lengthy essay is hardly to invalidate the others.

His opposition to the ideology of economism, his admission that the left have at least occasionally ‘got it right’ on environmental issues –as regards oil depletion, for example – and his demolition not only of neo-conservatism but also of some of the quirkier elements of the paleoconservative movement – are pretty spot on, at least in my view. In fact, his essay is one of the best neo-Malthusian contributions since Garrett Hardin’s book ‘The Ostrich Factor’. Ditto as to his debunking of ‘conservative’ Christians. As Attarian quite accurately states “f conservative Christians are aware of environmental and population issues at all, most simply demonize Thomas Robert Malthus, falsify his population theory, cite Julian Simon’s counterfactual rubbish that resources are non-finite, and dismiss the ecological concept of carrying capacity as “inappropriate, even dehumanizing” when applied to humans.”

You state that the basic point the Guessedworker and Attarian miss is that “politics in a democracy is ALWAYS centrist. Both sides get roughly only half of what they want.”

That wasn’t the ‘basic point’ at all. The ‘basic point’ of Attarian’s essay is that most conservatives are as shallow and superficial as the secularist left, that they are know-nothings, most of whom are in a state of denial about the four-plus horsemen of the apocalypse that are galloping on their way towards Western Civ. – demographic catastrophe, collapse of the welfare state, collapse of the US dollar, oil depletion, mass immigration ….

OK, I’ll omit the ‘anthropogenic global warming crisis’ horseman because it may well be a fiction of the imagination. But does anybody seriously claim that ALL those apocapyptic horsemen I’ve mentioned are products of a deranged mind?

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Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 17:52 | #

If you google “Paul Samuelson outsourcing” you’ll get into the reactions to Samuelson’s paper. Here’s a typical one:
______

Paul Samuelson, the eminent MIT Nobelist in economics, recently published an article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives that, according to the New York Times, is a:

“dissent from the mainstream economic consensus about outsourcing and globalization ... aimed at what Samuelson terms ‘the popular polemical untruth.’ That untruth, Samuelson asserts ... is the assumption that the laws of economics dictate that the U.S. economy will benefit in the long run from all forms of trade, including the outsourcing of call-center and software programming jobs abroad. Sure, Samuelson writes, the mainstream economists acknowledge that some people will gain and others will suffer in the short term, but they quickly add that ‘the gains of the American winners are big enough to more than compensate for the losers.’ That assumption, so widely shared by economists, is ‘only an innuendo,’ Samuelson writes. ‘For it is dead wrong about necessary surplus of winnings over losings.’ Trade, in other words, does not always work to all parties’ advantage, according to Samuelson. In an interview last week, Samuelson said he had written the article to ‘set the record straight’ because “the mainstream defenses of globalization were much too simple a statement of the problem.”

Source: Steve Lohr, “An Elder Challenges Outsourcing’s Orthodoxy,”
New York Times, September 9, 2004, Page C-1
______

In googling this subject one comes across lots of papers that seek to question Samuelson’s claims. Of the first four I came across and read through in order of their listing on the google page, the first two were by Subcontinentals( * ), the third by a U.S. white, and the fourth by a Subcontinental (ethnicity judged by surname and/or photo). (Guess what part of the world benefits most from the outsourcing being questioned by Prof. Samuelson?) Here is one such, chosen at random from the three I read by Subcontinentals, http://www.columbia.edu/~ap2231/Policy Papers/Samuelson JEP (Summer 2004)_Not on Outsourcing.htm , and here’s Samuelson’s paper.
______

( * I don’t use the race-denial terms “Asians,” “South Asians,” “East Asians,” and so on, terms roughly as descriptive as would be, let’s say, “Eastern Hemispherians.” Not being a race-denier, I stick with all traditional, polite terms that actually say what one is talking about in regard to race, ethnicity, nationality, country, etc., such as Oriental, Mongoloid, Chinaman or Chinese person, Hindu, Indian Subcontinental, and so forth. Yes, “Subcontinental” is cumbersome. When something less cumbersome comes up I’ll switch, but it must not be a term of neo-Marxist race-denial.)

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Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 18:08 | #

I meant to add that I agree with Mr. Copeland that Attarian’s paper is nothing short of brilliant. I’d never seen the paper before, or heard of Attarian. I marvel at this man’s erudition and right thinking and judgement, especially at the relatively young age he must have been. About seventy-five percent of the world’s most pressing political and social issues are correctly addressed and solved in one fell swoop in that paper. Attarian has spelled it all out for us. What remains is for us to implement the recommendations he spoon-feeds us there.

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Posted by John S Bolton on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 20:24 | #

If one wants to conserve freedom from aggression, this is so different from the freedoms that left and right seek to save or aggrandize, that it would need to be differentiated from the greater liberalism. The liberal capitalism of Mill wants freedom for aggression; for the majority seeking the greater good of the greater number. If aggression such as public support of education can lift up, enrich and free the majority from ignorance, it still would be wrong. So far as we have traditions of freedom from aggression, or can go back to them, or make new simulations of them which actually achieve freedom from aggression, no matter how unequal the results, that is what is to be conserved. Otherwise, we are saving memes which are transmitted vertically rather than horizontally, preferring the family-transmitted kind, as though believing one to be likely less virulent than another.

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Posted by John S Bolton on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 21:00 | #

In terms of transmission of valuable co-adapted complexes of genes which are to be conserved locally, state aggression has moved so far towards forced pressure towards randomization of these, that freedom of association would do most of what is wanted. Considering that it is the countries which actually have something valuable to conserve genetically, which find their governments using almost unspeakable aggression to deny freedom of disassociation, it should be clear that such freedom as racial covenants on property is vastly superior to the nihilistic egalitarianism of the liberal disorder.

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Posted by seelow heights on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 21:47 | #

In today’s climate freedom of association(for whites) = nazism. I don’t think it can be restored without the overthrow of the existing regime. I cringed internally when I typed that last sentence because (to us) it sounds like leftist juvenalia. Maybe we need a new vocabulary. How did Franco describe his project? But then his language was probably excessively Christian for today’s “West”.

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Posted by Geoff M. Beck on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 22:18 | #

Mr. Heights:

What is the “positive” paradigm that would be installed once all the dross of the past centuries was disposed of?

What sort of program for life is proposed? Yes, one can act “negatively” by destroying the corruption of modern life, but what is the positive program?

I can only see two practical approaches: neo-conservatism and paleo-conservatism.

Neo-Conservatism is a future guided by noble-lies, and slaying dragons. It is really neo-liberalism.

Paleo-Conservatism root’s are with De Maistre, Chateaubriand, and Walter Scott, an alternative to enlightenment.

Both are hardly new ideas. Are these the positive values for the new civilization? Yes, I entertain the fantasy of burning it all down, but what comes next may be worse!

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Posted by seelow heights on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 22:35 | #

A more “muscular” form of paleconism would be a good start. PJB began something like this but now is back in the GOP fold. IF a genuine opposition existed that the regime would have to take seriously we might be able to see things more clearly. What I do think is that we have an alien(not Jewish) regime “clanking its chains” (thank you GCW’s speechwriter) across the remains of the West.No, I don’t have a utopian vision for the future but the present situation seems too absurd to last very long.

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Posted by John Ray on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 22:46 | #

So much of what atarain says is totally uninformed that I have to dismiss the whole as the work of a crank.

If the “peak oil” theory is correct, for instance, how come proven oil reserves keep increasing?

If outsourcing hurts American wages so badly, how come Americans have such high wages—nearly 50% higher that Europe?

It’s all utter crap! I am sorry a bright spark like David has been misled by it

As for the 4 horsemen: Just take ONE of them—the so-called collapse of the dollar. IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED! The dollar has lost about a third of its value in a year! And who is hurting? NOBODY! It is in fact an overdue boon for American exporters, as any economimist could explain to you

Bah! Humbug!

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Posted by John Ray on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 22:51 | #

At the enormous peak of the Anglosphere’s power, success and influence, people are crying disaster! What a totally one-sided lack of perspective!

China and India will of course surpass us by the end of the century but that is a numbers game

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Posted by Geoff Beck on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 22:51 | #

Mr. Ray:

You ought to apply for a job in the Bush Adminstration, they need true believers.

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Posted by John Ray on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 22:54 | #

Geoff Beck ought to put in for an introduction to reality

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Posted by Guessedworker on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 23:23 | #

John,

I’m not batting for Attarian particularly. Wintermute sent me the link because he and I have had a prior discussion about the death or otherwise of Conservatism. If Conservatism is dead, as he and Attarian hold, then WN is the sole extanct vehicle by which (non-Australian) European Man can be saved from death by liberalism.

I don’t buy that because I don’t believe that Conservatism is a century-old corpse, as I will explain in the second part of the post.

So, what I’m saying here, John, is: if you’re going to tackle me do it on the basis of what I have written - that being thusfar and in a nutshell that Conservatives have to remove the motes from their eyes (and I number four such motes, though of course there are others, hence Charles’ unspecified extra horsemen).

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Posted by Geoff Beck on Sun, 16 Jan 2005 23:37 | #

Mr. Ray:

I believe you’re from Australia, yet you are qualified to speak about labor and wage conditions in America?

Who needs an introduction to reality? Who needs a bit of humility? I meet these foreigners like you, all the times. Oh, they know so much about my country.

They read a newspaper, hollywood movie or commie lib paper and think they know America. That I suppose is why you think Laura Ingraham isn’t a media elite.

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Posted by Fred Scrooby on Mon, 17 Jan 2005 01:53 | #

“China and India will of course surpass us by the end of the century but that is a numbers game”

This stuff isn’t graven in stone, John. Don’t be like the U.S. demographers who began telling us in the mid-80s we were bound to become a Hispanic-majority country, when they ought instead to have been telling D.C. to shut the southern border, scrap the 1965 Kennedy-Celler Immigration Holocaust bill, re-institute the national-origins immigration policy in effect from 1924 to 1965, and adjust tax and social welfare policy so as to get the white birthrate back up to normal levels. It is completely open to us right now to determine what will happen “by the end of the century.” If we allow Bush and Blair (who, on immigration, are to the left of Karl Marx) to bring to completion their plans to change both countries from white to Afro-Hispano-Asian, then not just China and India will surpass us by the end of the century but so will Paraguay, Gabon, Papua-New Guinea, and the Islands of the Lesser Antilles (with the Andaman Islands, Togoland, and us all running neck-and-neck dead-last, or something like that). As regards India, if we stay white as we’ve been, India can never surpass us in a thousand years. China of course would certainly appear to have the potential to surpass us even if we stay white, and the only way to prevent that is to surreptitiously foment rebellions against Peking by that country’s constituent nationalities, so that the behemoth breaks up into more manageable pieces, each a separate country in its own right that won’t be able to challenge the West. If we switch races from white to whatever Bush and Blair have in store for us, the game’s over anyway, so none of this is worth even discussing.

[Btw, something off topic: GW, congrats on the choice of the site’s current photo: Ernest Shackleton, “the Boss,” was one of the greatest and truest explorers, heroes, and men ever produced by your or any nation. It’s wonderful to see him in that perfect photo!)

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Posted by Fred Scrooby on Mon, 17 Jan 2005 02:16 | #

“I don’t buy that because I don’t believe that Conservatism is a century-old corpse, as I will explain in the second part of the post.”

GW, in your second part in that case I hope you will take into account such century-old corpse-like behavior as is mentioned in this reader’s comment posted recently in a Turnabout thread:
______

The following is from Robert L. Dabney’s essay, “Women’s Rights Women,” in “Discussions.” vol IV, “Secular,” the writings of Robert L. Dabney, originally published in 1897; republished by Sprinkle Publications, Harrisonburg, Virginia, 1994:

“It may be inferred again that the present movement for women’s rights will certainly prevail from the history of its only opponent, Northern conservatism. This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the accepted priniciples of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will to-morrow be forced upon its timidity, and will be succeeded by some third revolution to be denounced and adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves towards perdition ... It is worthless because it it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle.” p. 496.

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Posted by Fred Scrooby on Mon, 17 Jan 2005 03:40 | #

“In today’s climate freedom of association (for whites) = nazism. I don’t think it can be restored without the overthrow of the existing regime.” (—Seelow Heights, 8:47 PM)

Maybe it can’t, Seelow—but you can start chipping away at “today’s climate” right now, by merely saying the truth forthrightly whenever appropriate, that freedom of association for whites doesn’t equal nazism. Just keep speaking truth. Watch: Freedom of association for whites doesn’t equal nazism. There. I’ve said it. I wasn’t stricken by lightning. You’ll be surprised at how steady persistence bears fruit—the more so when truth is on your side and brazen lies are on the other.

Never forget: Little strokes fell great oaks.

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Posted by John S Bolton on Mon, 17 Jan 2005 05:21 | #

Liberal materialism rules the culture because government schools are founded on aggression, and aggression is physical. An institution of learning which uses aggression to grab a huge share of total income, must glorify that which furthers it. If you had a machine which could rapidly shift the culture fifty or more points out of a hundred to the right, would you turn it on? The abolition of the government schools would do that. Liberalism is the politics and jurisprudence of compassion for evil, it is the enemy of all that discriminates between good and evil, or would exclude anything bad. It is the materialism which says that no evildoer can possibly help it. It wants freedom for aggression and no freedom from aggression. Liberalism, enthusiasm for aggression, and government schools are all tied in together.

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Posted by seelow heights on Mon, 17 Jan 2005 07:42 | #

but you can start chipping away at “today’s climate” right now, by merely saying the truth forthrightly whenever appropriate, that freedom of association for whites doesn’t equal nazism. Just keep speaking truth. Watch: Freedom of association for whites doesn’t equal nazism. There. I’ve said it. I wasn’t stricken by lightning. You’ll be surprised at how steady persistence bears fruit—the more so when truth is on your side and brazen lies are on the other.

Never forget: Little strokes fell great oaks.
Posted by Fred Scrooby on 01/17 at 02:40 AM
While a few brave souls(none prominent) call for the restoration of the rights of freedom of association the regime has moved on to laws aginst “thought crimes.” There is a lot of freely expressed resistance to this latest innovation but Mr. Robert L.Dabney’s conservatives have fully accepted the notion that freedom of association is a relic of the dark past. BTW, is it true that Israel does not have “civil rights” laws? I know it does not have a written constitution.

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Posted by Guessedworker on Mon, 17 Jan 2005 11:22 | #

Fred,

Glad you admire Shack. He comes from that great, normal age when society valued glory for its own sake. Our modern emphasis on rights and the victim culture would have horrified him.

I’ve been scouring around for someone to replace him on the banner - you know, from among the folk with some connection to 17th January. But they are a bit of a varied bunch. There is, to be sure, Raoul Wallenberg, who was arrested by the Soviets on this day in 1945. But I don’t want to start another argument about the Jews. Then there’s Sir Thomas Crapper, who has a double claim on the day. Not only did he patent his useful device, thereby kicking the bucket forever out of our forefathers’ lives, but he kicked the bucket himself.

On reflection, then, Shack gets another 24 hours.

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Posted by Fred Scrooby on Mon, 17 Jan 2005 15:05 | #

“On reflection, then, Shack gets another 24 hours.”

Great choice, GW!

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Posted by ben tillman on Mon, 17 Jan 2005 17:45 | #

At the enormous peak of the Anglosphere’s power, success and influence, people are crying disaster! What a totally one-sided lack of perspective!
In a nutshell, the problem is that that power is being wielded to destroy the source of that very power. It’s hard to believe that has escaped your attention.

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Posted by ben tillman on Mon, 17 Jan 2005 17:53 | #

If Conservatism is dead, as [Wintermute] and Attarian hold, then WN is the sole extanct vehicle by which (non-Australian) European Man can be saved from death by liberalism.

The only difference between the two is the label, the latter label reminding us of what we are “conserving”.

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Posted by Svigor on Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:28 | #

So much of what atarain says is totally uninformed that I have to dismiss the whole as the work of a crank.

I tend to do this sort of thing myself far more often than I should, but I don’t pretend it’s logically defensible.

If the “peak oil” theory is correct, for instance, how come proven oil reserves keep increasing?

Does the peak oil theory demand that we believe the peak has already been reached?

If outsourcing hurts American wages so badly, how come Americans have such high wages—nearly 50% higher that Europe?

Is this what passes for logic in your world?

As for the 4 horsemen: Just take ONE of them—the so-called collapse of the dollar. IT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED! The dollar has lost about a third of its value in a year! And who is hurting? NOBODY! It is in fact an overdue boon for American exporters, as any economimist could explain to you

I’m an economics retard. I know nothing of economics. That said, the dollar chicken littles don’t frighten me because I think a lot of the decline in the dollar has to do with the fascination with the Euro, which is a passing dalliance because the Euro is doomed (at least as a dollar alternative), just like the EU.

In other words, I don’t think the dollar will collapse because there is no conceivable replacement.

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Posted by Svigor on Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:31 | #

I’m always a bit tacken aback when a discussion like this one goes on about systems and -isms for this long without mention of the first estate (the media). I’m not at my most coherent right now so I’ll just leave this post at a whine.

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Posted by Blevins on Mon, 17 Jan 2005 21:21 | #

To the big business stooge John Ray:

So you have an enthusiasm for free trade, perhaps even a religious faith?

I’m sure your gospel includes the practice of H1-B visa replacement. This allows big
business to bring in foreign nationals to replace Americans. Thousands of American software engineers have lost their jobs this way. Often they are humiliated by having to train the foreign mercenaries. In other cases the companies simply export the job. If the American finds another job the pay has been reduced by at least 1/3.

Or explain it the poor Whites and Blacks throughout the South and Midwest that have seen entire factories, equipment and all, sent overseas. These full time jobs are lost forever and they are forced to take part-time jobs ( oh yes they are employed, though ) which don’t offer health care benefits, or much else.

Or tell your gospel of free trade to the family farmer that can’t make a living because the big agri-business concerns favor crop importation policies. Generations of family farmers have lost everything, because of a corporate free-trade clique.

Is labor a commoditity for you too? Perhaps that is why Mexicans have taken over the construction, meat-packing and home building industries. They’ll work for a lot less. Oh, well, there is always Wal-mart.

The ever-victorious glow that you ascribe to American economics reveals woeful ignorance.

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Posted by Blevins on Mon, 17 Jan 2005 21:30 | #

Oh, I forget to mention average of debt of $14,000 which 60% of Americans carry. This is unsecured consumer debt.

This is our feeble attempt to maintain the standard of living we are used to, but can no longer enjoy - without goint into debt.

Courtesy of the banks of course. Which get rich of the interest only loans that on so believed by naive and struggling Americans.

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Posted by John Ray on Tue, 18 Jan 2005 11:33 | #

Scroob
I guess we all know that Scrooby is where the Pilgrim Fathers came from

Why don’t you use your real name?

It’s not Finkelstein is it?

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Posted by John Ray on Tue, 18 Jan 2005 11:36 | #

If Blevins took a course in Economics he would find a lot of things coming clearer. I used to teach it but a comments thread is not the place to do it

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Posted by John Ray on Tue, 18 Jan 2005 11:41 | #

Note that Samuelson was once a Commo and supported the Soviets in his textbook almost until they fell

You’re in good company guys!

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Posted by John Ray on Tue, 18 Jan 2005 11:53 | #

I will mention a few things towards stirring up a few minds here.

Outsourcing is just another form of trade—trade in services—and trade in sevices (mostly financial) was Britain’s biggest export earner last time I looked so don’t knock it.

And which have been the high growth countries in the last 50 years? Heavily trade-dependant countries—such as Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, S. Korea, Hong Kong. If you cannot understand the theory, at least take note of the facts

And most of the already rich countries are heavily trade dependant too: Germany, Britain, Swizerland.

The USA is only medium in trade dependancy. It would do even better if it scrapped its protections and traded more. It actually needs MORE outsourcing to maximize the wealth of its people

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Posted by Fred Scrooby on Tue, 18 Jan 2005 14:46 | #

John it’s foreign but not Finkelstein. (Don’t tell me you know Fred Finkelstein down in Oz, by the way! Next time you run into him, tell him G’Day from me!) When I began posting readers’ comments on web forums in late 2000 or early 2001 (at the old FrontPageMag.com forum) I signed using my real name, town, and state. Someone where I work happened to see a post of mine and strongly advised me to sign with a pen name. For a while I switched back and forth mainly among Cognassier (means quince tree in French), Levophobia (guess what that means), Unvarnished, and Unadorned, then stuck with Unadorned about a year-and-a-half or two years before switching to my present pen name half-a-year ago or so. You’re right about the Pilgrim significance of Scrooby: I chose it in furtherance of the aim of debunking brazen leftist lies. As you may know, the left in this country tries to deny the primal connection between the United States and the mother country, probably as part of their propaganda about its being some nonsense they call “the first Universal Nation.”

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Posted by Fred Scrooby on Wed, 19 Jan 2005 01:00 | #

I made that up about knowing Fred Finkelstein in Oz, John—I thought you’d been teasing a bit so I teased back. (Btw, I didn’t know Finkelstein meant that—that’s interesting.)

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