Okay, that’s probably a bit over the top… Maybe.
I didn’t used to be this way about Progressives, or Socialists, or Liberals (definitions of all to follow, in due course), and nothing in my childhood – as the son of a then-active Democrat who once ran for political office in a decidedly small, solidly Team Blue hometown – nor in my adult life working for the United States Government, both as a military officer and as a spook – would have ever suggested that I would come to think government a terrible (albeit necessary) evil that should be reigned in at every turn. I’ve concluded one thing: there should always be a presumption against government interference in anything – any walk of our lives, any way of commercing with one another, any way of peacefully interacting, that doesn’t directly harm someone. That presumption is called “liberty” or “freedom” and it was at the foundation of this Country’s greatness. Indeed, one might well argue that the concept of the supremacy of the individual as the most important unit of moral measure is the single greatest contribution these United States ever made to humanity. That it would take only one-hundred fifty years for it to be completely undermined and forgotten as an ethical premise is a tragedy.
In any event, I had no idea I would wind up being this way – it’s just that Life pointed this stuff out. I could no longer disbelieve the facts and reality when they were placed so squarely before me. In fact, my interactions with Liberal political agendas – like the “sexual assault epidemic in the military” – Holy Fuck, if there was ever anything that more resembled a witch hunt, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it. I had a front row seat for it, in fact. That in and of itself is its own story, but let me just encapsulate it by saying, I served in the Office of the Commandant of the Marine Corps, working for his lawyer, the Staff Judge Advocate to the Commandant, then Major General Vaughn Ary who, it should be said, was one of the finest leaders I ever had the good fortune of serving under, and he was equally as gracious a gentleman. I once was sitting with him at a dinner somewhere and the discussion turned to the “epidemic” sexual assault and the changes in the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s rape statute (which would later be found unconstitutional, a couple of times, including by a judge I was in front of). I knew all of the pressure that was being put on the military to “clean up” its act around sexual assault. The problem was, it was all bullshit. And all of the defense attorneys in the Marine Corps – and most of the honest prosecutors – knew it, too. It was a complete shit-show. I get embarrassed thinking about it.
Here was the problem, it had its origins in the same fabulism that is spreading through campuses right now, where students are being wrongly accused of rape, stories are being completely manufactured – Yes, Rolling Stone, you dumb fucks, I’m looking at you – and you, too, UVA. Even the most cursory inquiry of witnesses would have revealed that case was a complete fraud from the start. If that had been a law enforcement agency that had done the same thing, in a criminal trial, I would have eviscerated them on the stand. Gladly. Because they would have fucking deserved it. You do not turn someone’s life inside out as a sacrificial lamb for your pet cause – and THAT’S what Progressivism, Liberalism, and even Socialism, are all about. Human beings don’t matter in socialism – they’re just units of production of the state. You think that’s not what socialism means? Really? Have you read much of what Marx actually wrote? Seriously. I know they’re not making teenagers in high school digest Das Kapital, all three fucking volumes, so whenever I hear people ardently defending socialism, I always ask, have you read much Marx? Because that’s the guy from whence most of the modern ilk of socialists come. He was kinda THE guy who coined that whole fucking evil ideology.
I have a belief that someday distant generations will look back on the massive failures and loss of life and human suffering perpetrated by socialism in the 20th century alone and they’ll look at those of us in the 21st century who keep on beating that drum, and they’ll say, “Why the fuck did anyone in that time listen to those fucking people?”
Here’s the thing about socialism, it’s only failed the worst where it’s been tried the hardest. Try to chew on that for a bit, particularly if you’re stupid enough to believe in socialism. You particularly need to hear that, so…
Just go back and re-read that again. Now think, Venezuela. Yes, my friends, socialist paradise. Don’t believe me, go read Wiki-fucking-pedia because that’s probably all you’re going to do anyway, but if you read around a little more, like the Economist or some other magazines, maybe Foreign Policy (not my favorite), or even the mainstream rags, you’ll soon come to know these facts: Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the whole. entire. fucking. world. Yep – just suck on that one for a moment. In fact, just to tease the argument, ask yourself this: if the United States owned the largest oil reserves in the world, do you think we would be broke and our people starving and the government unable to provide even toilet paper? Because that’s what is going on in Venezuela. You can’t make this stuff up.
Now, let me spoil the rest of the argument and just ask the question: do you (rhetorical “you”) think it’s because Venezuelans have too much capitalism – that’s what is making them so broke?? I mean, is there anyone – ANYONE with a sane grasp of basic economics – who is going to argue that what happened in Venezuela was too much capitalism and free market economics? I would love to hear someone make that case. Truly. Just for the lulz.
Now, flip it on its head, is there anyone who thinks that if the U.S. of A owned the largest oil reserves in the world, that we would be in the same situation? If you know the correct answer – “No Fucking Way!!” – then please explain to the class how it is that you have come to believe that? What makes you think we would figure out a way to use the world’s largest oil reserves in a productive fashion? The answer can’t be simply, “Ooooh, Americans are so smart” because the implication is that Venezuelans are dumb, and that’s both racist and untrue. So, what would America have that Venezuela doesn’t that would make such a drastic difference? It is not “TOP MEN!!” It is not infrastructure, either, although that’s a good start – you would be at least starting to look in the right direction. How did we get all of those privately owned oil drills, and refineries, and processing and distribution networks that get oil out to Americans across the country?? (And oil isn’t even a good example because it’s been one of the most meddled-with and government-fucked sectors ever. A solid reading of what happened to Standard Oil – not the Progressive history indoctrination your children are getting – but just exactly what the government did to Standard Oil, will ‘splain that quite well. Think of it this way, how much capitalism and freedom do you think government will allow once it has declared a commodity – like oil – a “strategic asset?”)
The fact is that the difference between Venezuela and the United States is our economic systems. It’s that simple. To the extent we have free markets, and to that extent alone, do we optimize the capability of those resources. We don’t, by the way… have free markets. They’re horribly hindered and gummed up and fucked up by rent-seekers, including government, the worst of them all. I’ll tell some tales about that as we go, but watch and see what happens with “net neutrality.” Anyone who thinks otherwise is ignorant of how shit works and gets done in the world – or they believe force being used against people is better. Those are the two options, unfortunately.
You either let people have a system wherein they can try to optimize resources, be it information, time, weather, piles of dirt, diamonds, avocados, silicon for computer chips, grapes for wine, oil, coal, natural gas, lumber, rare metals (like uranium), etc., or you decide that instead of voluntary transactions between people, some other party – someone who has nothing to do with the transaction (known as “bureaucrat”), gets to decide when it can occur, what time, under what conditions, with whom, how much it will be taxed, and on and on and on and on – and then try to tell me which is more efficient. Seriously. The latter is socialism. It’s government in every-fucking-thing we do, hyper-regulating even traditional hair braiding. (When even a liberal rag like the NY Times is running pieces talking about how overregulated we are, and you’re the proponent of more government, you’ve got PR problems).
I could pick any number of socialist paradises – like Cuba. Or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics USSR). Or China. Or those National Socialist guys… I hate bringing that one up, because of course the internet is filled with this “If you bring up Hitler you lose the argument!!!!!” meme. Of course, even if that had any validity at all, it wouldn’t apply when the thing you’re discussing is actually that regime, as a specific example of what happens when you really embrace your inner socialism. I know my European socialist friends fucking hate when I bring it up.
…It’s so galling.
Now, they’ve got to make the claim that Hitler wasn’t REALLY a socialist, even though he spoke the same language as the guy who kinda popularized the whole philosophy, and was a member of that…ahem….Party, which considered merging with another rival socialist party in their early years. In short, I force my socialist friends to have to start doing the “Back Away From Hitler” dance – and it really pisses them off. All the academic socialists go nuts when I do that. You can be sure insults are soon to follow, along with a long litany of policies by Hitler that PROVE he didn’t even really have an economic plan at all….
Uh-huh. Right. Germany suffered from too much capitalism and free markets. Hitler was a HUGE fan of people doing whatever they wanted to and all kinds of freedom-loving shit like that. He didn’t co-opt factories to make weapons of war or anything. They all just did that on their own, like, just because…
But the reason my socialist friends truly hate that inconvenient fact (or Mao, or Stalin, Pol Pot, or Castro, or Chavez/Maduro.. well, you get the idea) is because….
Progressivism and Socialism like to meet in a coffee shop called “Morally Superior to You.” If I still flew attack helicopters I would be tempted to commandeer one late at night – an armed one – and turn that coffee shop into a smoking ablasion with about a half-dozen Hellfire missiles, and then make a couple of passes with 2.75″ rockets and some 20MM HEI for good measure.
Fuuuuck, it’s bad enough that people advocate for a philosophy that has killed anywhere between 130 million to perhaps over one billion people – it really just depends on how you count, and if you’re willing to fault a philosophy – socialism, and its more openly militant sub-altern, communism – for human action. I am; and I do. But on top of that, the greater offense (for me, since I don’t live in a socialist hellhole) is that socialists walk and talk and act like they’re morally superior to those evil, greedy capitalists. It’s sickening.
And the crux of the matter is that is exactly how socialists/liberals took control, especially here in America. Capitalists, free-market advocates, libertarians, conservatives (as George Nash would attempt to define them in his amazing work), all lost the moral argument, or – to return to the theme I intend to develop throughout these pieces – they lost the values argument to socialists/progressives.
Why they lost is an interesting question into which I’ll delve into as I go along.
I’ll leave it there for now. Stay tuned for the next installment, which will include a lesson on black markets, concerns for children, and more.