A few opinion pieces: Links post 1 for July 10th, 2022

Here are a few interesting and varied opinion pieces, both video and written on a few subjects we follow.

First, GBN on the galloping authoritarianism we all face. His analogy was, “Burning down the house to get rid of the mice, and ending up with a home in ashes and still have the mice”.

2. Neil Oliver: Farmers Under Fire

(It is about building homes for illegal migrants in the Netherlands.)

3. From BOOM Finance and Economics: Communism — “You Will Own Nothing and You will be Happy” — Who Will Control Central Control? — Cash Must Become King Again

(Only the first few paragraphs are here as usual. Please click through for the whole article. It is authored by a retired doctor who now runs a financial magazine)

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is promising a future where “you will own nothing and you will be happy”. It is an old Communist dream. The leader of the WEF, Klaus Schwab, is making this promise, obscured by his now-familiar terms — “The Great Reset”, “the Fourth Industrial Revolution” and “Stakeholder Capitalism”. But it is far from capitalism and it is not revolutionary. In fact, it is a return to the past and Thomas More’s 500 year old dream of Utopia.

Thomas More was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman and Renaissance humanist. He served Henry VIII (the Eighth) as Lord High Chancellor of England from October 1529 to May 1532. He wrote a book called Utopia, published in 1516, in which he described the political system of an imaginary island state — where everyone would be happy and where there would be no need for money.

More’s dreams of Utopia ended with decapitation but 300 years later they turned into the fevered dreams of a Frenchman, Charles Fourier in the early 19th century. His dreams became known as Fourierism and then Utopian Socialism. Fourier infected Karl Marx via his American acolyte, the newspaper publisher Horace Greeley (Marx’s employer) and the result was what we now call Marxist Socialism or Marxism — essentially a promise of Heaven on Earth — where you will own nothing and you will be happy. These ideas married to the dreams of the Eugenics movement infected Germany in the 1930’s via Adolf Hitler, the leader of a party that adopted the name The National Socialist Party. Hitler’s central banker was baptized by his parents with the name Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht.

4. Speech (in text) by ex-editor of the New York Times, Bari Weiss to the students at the University of Austin

(Long but excellent speech)

Before I begin, I must recognize that we are currently sitting on the ancestral home of the Apache and that my pronouns are she, her and hers. Also I am a cis–gendered woman, a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, generally able-bodied though my eyesight is less than 20/20 and I can’t run more than half a mile. Also, my own family was displaced by Cossacks at some point in the mid-1800s in what is now called Poland and we’re still waiting for an apology.

I’m older than you guys, so I remember a time when the sentences I just uttered would have been incomprehensible outside of a critical theory class with a couple dozen people. That was back when the idea of “staying woke” was a lyric Lead Belly sang. That was before the phrase cancel culture was a thing.

I distinctly remember the first cancellation I heard about, though we didn’t call it that then. It was 2014. The school was Brandeis–a school founded on the notion of religious freedom, a school with the motto “truth, even unto its innermost parts”—and the school had extended an honorary degree to the magnificent Ayaan Hirsi Ali only to withdraw it. It was a scandal. I remember reading dozens of stories about it.

Those were the days. Now that story would last maybe half a day. Because now, the whole country is a campus. 

5. From The Mayor.EU: Jutta Steinruck: Our task is to shape the huge transformation processes of our time successfully and consensually

(Methinks the “consensually” part is more lubricant than option)

An interview with the mayor of Ludwigshafen, Germany

Jutta Steinruck was a member of the European Parliament for the German Social Democrats from 2009 to the end of 2017. Among other things, she was a member of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL). From 2014 until she left, she was the coordinator for the S&D Group. Her main areas of work were labour market policy and social policy, showing her particular commitment to a more social Europe.
After leaving the European Parliament, she immediately accepted the position as Lord Mayoress of the City of Ludwigshafen am Rhein, the second-largest in Rhineland-Palatinate, in January 2018.

Lord Mayoress Steinruck, how would you describe the city of Ludwigshafen and what would you say is its most well-known landmark?

Ludwigshafen is a young city; it is innovative, cosmopolitan, and open to new ideas. Global corporations have their headquarters here; we have a strong industry, but also strong medium-sized companies. Ludwigshafen is a place that thinks about production and research, and connects one to the other; a place that bravely faces new challenges repeatedly, but does not forget its roots in the process.

(Lenin’s party pre-Soviet Union was actually called, “The Socialist Democratic Party” and not the communist party. That happens after they take over.)

Thank you all for being part of this community in a collective effort to save individual rights.