EU proposal to monitor "intolerant" citizens

[Skybird]

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4036/eu-intolerant-citizens

Nice. One more step into the heart of darkness.

See this in conjunction with a since long running initiative from the middle of the EU parliament to make criticism of EU representatives, EU bodies and EU policies a punishable offense. Totalitarianism is quite acceptable - if it is in support of these parasites' ideological goals.

[AVGWarhawk]

I heard this on the radio today. Incredible. So what are your plans to avoid this Skybird?

:O:

[Sailor Steve]

"We won't tolerate anyone who is intolerant." :O:

[Rhodes]

Well, since I not intolerant to anything (I think so) I am fine!

[Jimbuna]

I know what section of society you'll be put in if the authorities see this thread :)

[mapuc]

I do hope it's some kind of a hoax

If not....I have to say this

Why did we fight Hitler and the Nazism or the communist

Markus

[Jimbuna]

Anything is possible where the EU are concerned :)

[Herr-Berbunch]

So what are your plans to avoid this Skybird?

:O:

Surely the only way is - if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

[Wolferz]

Wouldn't they be breaking their own law during election cycles?
Set the charges and hope they don't hoist you on your own pitard Herr politicians.:hmmm:

[Tribesman]

I can see why that author is fretting, he is one hell of an intolerant bigot.
A brief summary of his blog...muslims, muslims, muslims, immigrants, foriegners, muslims, muslims, eurabia, muslim immigrants, muslims, immigrants, foriegners, foreign muslims, muslims, muslims, muslims.... basques:doh:

[AVGWarhawk]

I can see why that author is fretting, he is one hell of an intolerant bigot.
A brief summary of his blog...muslims, muslims, muslims, immigrants, foriegners, muslims, muslims, eurabia, muslim immigrants, muslims, immigrants, foriegners, foreign muslims, muslims, muslims, muslims.... basques:doh:

I guess he will be watched then. :03:

[AndyJWest]

Yup, The Gatestone Institute is a NeoCon think-tank. With a long record of anti-Moslem rhetoric.

If you want the facts about this, rather than spin, I'd look elsewhere.

[Sailor Steve]

Anything is possible where the EU are concerned :)
Anything is possible where anyone with power is concerned. No government should ever be trusted further than its citizens can throw it.

[mapuc]

I follow some of the Danish and Swedish politician who works in the EU-Parliament I have send them the link and asked for a confirmation on this story, if it is true.

Some of them are what we could say EU-Critics and some are EU-lovers

Markus

[Jimbuna]

UKIP must be rubbing their hands with glee :Kaleun_Salivating:

[Tribesman]

I follow some of the Danish and Swedish politician who works in the EU-Parliament I have send them the link and asked for a confirmation on this story, if it is true.

The story is true, there is a draft.
That's all the story is, the rest is just spin by some far out political freaks from the fringe.

[mapuc]

The story is true, there is a draft.
That's all the story is, the rest is just spin by some far out political freaks from the fringe.

For your information. I haven't heard anything from them

And the reason why? Because it's a hoax of some kind and as an politician you don't have time to response to should nonsense

Markus

[STEED]

The Fourth Reich is Here...The EU.

Replaced bombs and bullets for spying and control.


EU Proposal to Monitor "Intolerant" Citizens

Red file for STEED he hates the EU and wants to see it fall.

Europe would be better off getting rid of the vile EU PIGS.

[mapuc]

The Fourth Reich is Here...The EU.

Replaced bombs and bullets for spying and control.




Red file for STEED he hates the EU and wants to see it fall.

Europe would be better off getting rid of the vile EU PIGS.

I HATE EU too. But I will never forget my brain, when reading some anti-EU stuff.

It is, how should I explain it, like a person who's against EU are more into the belief, than those who love EU or doesn't care, in story like the one above.

Markus

[Jimbuna]

Nothing wrong with the EU if your getting more out of it than you put in I suppose.

We should be so lucky.

[Madox58]

I'm suspicious of anything that can be pronounced
Eeew!
:D

[Oberon]

The EU seems to be like Obama, no-one seems to know if it's Communist or Fascist...

Maybe it's those damn Communazis again...

http://imageshack.us/a/img13/2909/9h7b.jpg

[Madox58]

The EU seems to be like Obama, no-one seems to know if it's Communist or Fascist...

Maybe it's those damn Communazis again...

http://imageshack.us/a/img13/2909/9h7b.jpg

Nah. Has to be the NWO doesn't it?
The same ones Bubbles and Yubba warned us about?
:hmmm:

[Oberon]

Nah. Has to be the NWO doesn't it?
The same ones Bubbles and Yubba warned us about?
:hmmm:

http://sciencefictionruminations.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/statue_planet.jpeg

"THEY WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG!! DAMN IT ALL! DAMN IT ALL TO HELL!!"

[Skybird]

The EU seems to be like Obama, no-one seems to know if it's Communist or Fascist...


Are you sure there is a difference? The Third Reich was a socialist country, mind you. And socialism(communism) always, necessarily, must be totalitarian, else it could not become and stay socialist. ;)

[AndyJWest]

Ah yes the 'Nazis were really socialists' line - as peddled by right-wing revisionist 'historians' who don't actually give a %*#@ about history, and want to hold the left to blame for genocidal right-wing lunatics.

And don't bother trying to argue, Skybird. There are precisely zero credible historians that take this garbage seriously. It is a lie. And the lying liars peddling the lie know it is a lie.


First they came for the communists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for me,

and there was no one left to speak for me.

[Skybird]

Its already in the name, nationalsocialism, Mr. Wise. And not for no reason. It does not matter whether you read it as nationalism + socialism, or national socialism.

You want no historians? Okay, I can understand that, they would take your scalp too easily. Here is an economist.


Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

2005, by George Reisman

( George Reisman, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics (Ret.) at Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business and Management in Los Angeles and is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996), from which parts of this article were excerpted. )

My purpose today is to make just two main points: (1) To show why Nazi Germany was a socialist state, not a capitalist one. And (2) to show why socialism, understood as an economic system based on government ownership of the means of production, positively requires a totalitarian dictatorship.

The identification of Nazi Germany as a socialist state was one of the many great contributions of Ludwig von Mises.

When one remembers that the word "Nazi" was an abbreviation for "der Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiters Partei — in English translation: the National Socialist German Workers' Party — Mises's identification might not appear all that noteworthy. For what should one expect the economic system of a country ruled by a party with "socialist" in its name to be but socialism?

Nevertheless, apart from Mises and his readers, practically no one thinks of Nazi Germany as a socialist state. It is far more common to believe that it represented a form of capitalism, which is what the Communists and all other Marxists have claimed.

The basis of the claim that Nazi Germany was capitalist was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.

What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.

De facto government ownership of the means of production, as Mises termed it, was logically implied by such fundamental collectivist principles embraced by the Nazis as that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. If the individual is a means to the ends of the State, so too, of course, is his property. Just as he is owned by the State, his property is also owned by the State.

But what specifically established de facto socialism in Nazi Germany was the introduction of price and wage controls in 1936. These were imposed in response to the inflation of the money supply carried out by the regime from the time of its coming to power in early 1933. The Nazi regime inflated the money supply as the means of financing the vast increase in government spending required by its programs of public works, subsidies, and rearmament. The price and wage controls were imposed in response to the rise in prices that began to result from the inflation.

The effect of the combination of inflation and price and wage controls is shortages, that is, a situation in which the quantities of goods people attempt to buy exceed the quantities available for sale.

Shortages, in turn, result in economic chaos. It's not only that consumers who show up in stores early in the day are in a position to buy up all the stocks of goods and leave customers who arrive later, with nothing — a situation to which governments typically respond by imposing rationing. Shortages result in chaos throughout the economic system. They introduce randomness in the distribution of supplies between geographical areas, in the allocation of a factor of production among its different products, in the allocation of labor and capital among the different branches of the economic system.

In the face of the combination of price controls and shortages, the effect of a decrease in the supply of an item is not, as it would be in a free market, to raise its price and increase its profitability, thereby operating to stop the decrease in supply, or reverse it if it has gone too far. Price control prohibits the rise in price and thus the increase in profitability. At the same time, the shortages caused by price controls prevent increases in supply from reducing price and profitability. When there is a shortage, the effect of an increase in supply is merely a reduction in the severity of the shortage. Only when the shortage is totally eliminated does an increase in supply necessitate a decrease in price and bring about a decrease in profitability.

As a result, the combination of price controls and shortages makes possible random movements of supply without any effect on price and profitability. In this situation, the production of the most trivial and unimportant goods, even pet rocks, can be expanded at the expense of the production of the most urgently needed and important goods, such as life-saving medicines, with no effect on the price or profitability of either good. Price controls would prevent the production of the medicines from becoming more profitable as their supply decreased, while a shortage even of pet rocks prevented their production from becoming less profitable as their supply increased.

As Mises showed, to cope with such unintended effects of its price controls, the government must either abolish the price controls or add further measures, namely, precisely the control over what is produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it is distributed, which I referred to earlier. The combination of price controls with this further set of controls constitutes the de facto socialization of the economic system. For it means that the government then exercises all of the substantive powers of ownership.

This was the socialism instituted by the Nazis. And Mises calls it socialism on the German or Nazi pattern, in contrast to the more obvious socialism of the Soviets, which he calls socialism on the Russian or Bolshevik pattern.

Of course, socialism does not end the chaos caused by the destruction of the price system. It perpetuates it. And if it is introduced without the prior existence of price controls, its effect is to inaugurate that very chaos. This is because socialism is not actually a positive economic system. It is merely the negation of capitalism and its price system. As such, the essential nature of socialism is one and the same as the economic chaos resulting from the destruction of the price system by price and wage controls. (I want to point out that Bolshevik-style socialism's imposition of a system of production quotas, with incentives everywhere to exceed the quotas, is a sure formula for universal shortages, just as exist under all around price and wage controls.)

At most, socialism merely changes the direction of the chaos. The government's control over production may make possible a greater production of some goods of special importance to itself, but it does so only at the expense of wreaking havoc throughout the rest of the economic system. This is because the government has no way of knowing the effects on the rest of the economic system of its securing the production of the goods to which it attaches special importance.

The requirements of enforcing a system of price and wage controls shed major light on the totalitarian nature of socialism — most obviously, of course, on that of the German or Nazi variant of socialism, but also on that of Soviet-style socialism as well.

We can start with the fact that the financial self-interest of sellers operating under price controls is to evade the price controls and raise their prices. Buyers otherwise unable to obtain goods are willing, indeed, eager to pay these higher prices as the means of securing the goods they want. In these circumstances, what is to stop prices from rising and a massive black market from developing?

The answer is a combination of severe penalties combined with a great likelihood of being caught and then actually suffering those penalties. Mere fines are not likely to provide much of a deterrent. They will be regarded simply as an additional business expense. If the government is serious about its price controls, it is necessary for it to impose penalties comparable to those for a major felony.

But the mere existence of such penalties is not enough. The government has to make it actually dangerous to conduct black-market transactions. It has to make people fear that in conducting such a transaction they might somehow be discovered by the police, and actually end up in jail. In order to create such fear, the government must develop an army of spies and secret informers. For example, the government must make a storekeeper and his customer fearful that if they engage in a black-market transaction, some other customer in the store will report them.

Because of the privacy and secrecy in which many black-market transactions can be conducted, the government must also make anyone contemplating a black-market transaction fearful that the other party might turn out to be a police agent trying to entrap him. The government must make people fearful even of their long-time associates, even of their friends and relatives, lest even they turn out to be informers.

And, finally, in order to obtain convictions, the government must place the decision about innocence or guilt in the case of black-market transactions in the hands of an administrative tribunal or its police agents on the spot. It cannot rely on jury trials, because it is unlikely that many juries can be found willing to bring in guilty verdicts in cases in which a man might have to go to jail for several years for the crime of selling a few pounds of meat or a pair of shoes above the ceiling price.

In sum, therefore, the requirements merely of enforcing price-control regulations is the adoption of essential features of a totalitarian state, namely, the establishment of the category of "economic crimes," in which the peaceful pursuit of material self-interest is treated as a criminal offense, and the establishment of a totalitarian police apparatus replete with spies and informers and the power of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment.

Clearly, the enforcement of price controls requires a government similar to that of Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia, in which practically anyone might turn out to be a police spy and in which a secret police exists and has the power to arrest and imprison people. If the government is unwilling to go to such lengths, then, to that extent, its price controls prove unenforceable and simply break down. The black market then assumes major proportions. (Incidentally, none of this is to suggest that price controls were the cause of the reign of terror instituted by the Nazis. The Nazis began their reign of terror well before the enactment of price controls. As a result, they enacted price controls in an environment ready made for their enforcement.)

Black market activity entails the commission of further crimes. Under de facto socialism, the production and sale of goods in the black market entails the defiance of the government's regulations concerning production and distribution, as well as the defiance of its price controls. For example, the goods themselves that are sold in the black market are intended by the government to be distributed in accordance with its plan, and not in the black market. The factors of production used to produce those goods are likewise intended by the government to be used in accordance with its plan, and not for the purpose of supplying the black market.

Under a system of de jure socialism, such as existed in Soviet Russia, in which the legal code of the country openly and explicitly makes the government the owner of the means of production, all black-market activity necessarily entails the misappropriation or theft of state property. For example, the factory workers or managers in Soviet Russia who turned out products that they sold in the black market were considered as stealing the raw materials supplied by the state.

Furthermore, in any type of socialist state, Nazi or Communist, the government's economic plan is part of the supreme law of the land. We all have a good idea of how chaotic the so-called planning process of socialism is. Its further disruption by workers and managers siphoning off materials and supplies to produce for the black market, is something which a socialist state is logically entitled to regard as an act of sabotage of its national economic plan. And sabotage is how the legal code of a socialist state does regard it. Consistent with this fact, black-market activity in a socialist country often carries the death penalty.

Now I think that a fundamental fact that explains the all-round reign of terror found under socialism is the incredible dilemma in which a socialist state places itself in relation to the masses of its citizens. On the one hand, it assumes full responsibility for the individual's economic well-being. Russian or Bolshevik-style socialism openly avows this responsibility — this is the main source of its popular appeal. On the other hand, in all of the ways one can imagine, a socialist state makes an unbelievable botch of the job. It makes the individual's life a nightmare.

Every day of his life, the citizen of a socialist state must spend time in endless waiting lines. For him, the problems Americans experienced in the gasoline shortages of the 1970s are normal; only he does not experience them in relation to gasoline — for he does not own a car and has no hope of ever owning one — but in relation to simple items of clothing, to vegetables, even to bread. Even worse he is frequently forced to work at a job that is not of his choice and which he therefore must certainly hate. (For under shortages, the government comes to decide the allocation of labor just as it does the allocation of the material factors of production.) And he lives in a condition of unbelievable overcrowding, with hardly ever a chance for privacy. (In the face of housing shortages, boarders are assigned to homes; families are compelled to share apartments. And a system of internal passports and visas is adopted to limit the severity of housing shortages in the more desirable areas of the country.) To put it mildly, a person forced to live in such conditions must seethe with resentment and hostility.

Now against whom would it be more logical for the citizens of a socialist state to direct their resentment and hostility than against that very socialist state itself? The same socialist state which has proclaimed its responsibility for their life, has promised them a life of bliss, and which in fact is responsible for giving them a life of hell. Indeed, the leaders of a socialist state live in a further dilemma, in that they daily encourage the people to believe that socialism is a perfect system whose bad results can only be the work of evil men. If that were true, who in reason could those evil men be but the rulers themselves, who have not only made life a hell, but have perverted an allegedly perfect system to do it?

It follows that the rulers of a socialist state must live in terror of the people. By the logic of their actions and their teachings, the boiling, seething resentment of the people should well up and swallow them in an orgy of bloody vengeance. The rulers sense this, even if they do not admit it openly; and thus their major concern is always to keep the lid on the citizenry.

Consequently, it is true but very inadequate merely to say such things as that socialism lacks freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Of course, it lacks these freedoms. If the government owns all the newspapers and publishing houses, if it decides for what purposes newsprint and paper are to be made available, then obviously nothing can be printed which the government does not want printed. If it owns all the meeting halls, no public speech or lecture can be delivered which the government does not want delivered. But socialism goes far beyond the mere lack of freedom of press and speech.

A socialist government totally annihilates these freedoms. It turns the press and every public forum into a vehicle of hysterical propaganda in its own behalf, and it engages in the relentless persecution of everyone who dares to deviate by so much as an inch from its official party line.

The reason for these facts is the socialist rulers' terror of the people. To protect themselves, they must order the propaganda ministry and the secret police to work 'round the clock. The one, to constantly divert the people's attention from the responsibility of socialism, and of the rulers of socialism, for the people's misery. The other, to spirit away and silence anyone who might even remotely suggest the responsibility of socialism or its rulers — to spirit away anyone who begins to show signs of thinking for himself. It is because of the rulers' terror, and their desperate need to find scapegoats for the failures of socialism, that the press of a socialist country is always full of stories about foreign plots and sabotage, and about corruption and mismanagement on the part of subordinate officials, and why, periodically, it is necessary to unmask large-scale domestic plots and to sacrifice major officials and entire factions in giant purges.

It is because of their terror, and their desperate need to crush every breath even of potential opposition, that the rulers of socialism do not dare to allow even purely cultural activities that are not under the control of the state. For if people so much as assemble for an art show or poetry reading that is not controlled by the state, the rulers must fear the dissemination of dangerous ideas. Any unauthorized ideas are dangerous ideas, because they can lead people to begin thinking for themselves and thus to begin thinking about the nature of socialism and its rulers. The rulers must fear the spontaneous assembly of a handful of people in a room, and use the secret police and its apparatus of spies, informers, and terror either to stop such meetings or to make sure that their content is entirely innocuous from the point of view of the state.

Socialism cannot be ruled for very long except by terror. As soon as the terror is relaxed, resentment and hostility logically begin to well up against the rulers. The stage is thus set for a revolution or civil war. In fact, in the absence of terror, or, more correctly, a sufficient degree of terror, socialism would be characterized by an endless series of revolutions and civil wars, as each new group of rulers proved as incapable of making socialism function successfully as its predecessors before it. The inescapable inference to be drawn is that the terror actually experienced in the socialist countries was not simply the work of evil men, such as Stalin, but springs from the nature of the socialist system. Stalin could come to the fore because his unusual willingness and cunning in the use of terror were the specific characteristics most required by a ruler of socialism in order to remain in power. He rose to the top by a process of socialist natural selection: the selection of the worst.

I need to anticipate a possible misunderstanding concerning my thesis that socialism is totalitarian by its nature. This concerns the allegedly socialist countries run by Social Democrats, such as Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries, which are clearly not totalitarian dictatorships.

In such cases, it is necessary to realize that along with these countries not being totalitarian, they are also not socialist. Their governing parties may espouse socialism as their philosophy and their ultimate goal, but socialism is not what they have implemented as their economic system. Their actual economic system is that of a hampered market economy, as Mises termed it. While more hampered than our own in important respects, their economic system is essentially similar to our own, in that the characteristic driving force of production and economic activity is not government decree but the initiative of private owners motivated by the prospect of private profit.

The reason that Social Democrats do not establish socialism when they come to power, is that they are unwilling to do what would be required. The establishment of socialism as an economic system requires a massive act of theft — the means of production must be seized from their owners and turned over to the state. Such seizure is virtually certain to provoke substantial resistance on the part of the owners, resistance which can be overcome only by use of massive force.

The Communists were and are willing to apply such force, as evidenced in Soviet Russia. Their character is that of armed robbers prepared to commit murder if that is what is necessary to carry out their robbery. The character of the Social Democrats in contrast is more like that of pickpockets, who may talk of pulling the big job someday, but who in fact are unwilling to do the killing that would be required, and so give up at the slightest sign of serious resistance.

As for the Nazis, they generally did not have to kill in order to seize the property of Germans other than Jews. This was because, as we have seen, they established socialism by stealth, through price controls, which served to maintain the outward guise and appearance of private ownership. The private owners were thus deprived of their property without knowing it and thus felt no need to defend it by force.

I think I have shown that socialism — actual socialism — is totalitarian by its very nature.


In the United States at the present time, we do not have socialism in any form. And we do not have a dictatorship, let alone a totalitarian dictatorship.

We also do not yet have Fascism, though we are moving towards it. Among the essential elements that are still lacking are one-party rule and censorship. We still have freedom of speech and press and free elections, though both have been undermined and their continued existence cannot be guaranteed.

What we have is a hampered market economy that is growing ever more hampered by ever more government intervention, and that is characterized by a growing loss of individual freedom. The growth of the government's economic intervention is synonymous with a loss of individual freedom because it means increasingly initiating the use of physical force to make people do what they do not voluntarily choose to do or prevent them from doing what they do voluntarily choose to do.

Since the individual is the best judge of his own interests, and at least as a rule seeks to do what it is in his interest to do and to avoid doing what harms his interest, it follows that the greater the extent of government intervention, the greater the extent to which individuals are prevented from doing what benefits them and are instead compelled to do what causes them loss.

Today, in the United States, government spending, federal, state, and local, amounts to almost half of the monetary incomes of the portion of the citizenry that does not work for the government. Fifteen federal cabinet departments, and a much larger number of federal regulatory agencies, together, in most instances with counterparts at the state and local level, routinely intrude into virtually every area of the individual citizen's life. In countless ways he is taxed, compelled, and prohibited.

The effect of such massive government interference is unemployment, rising prices, falling real wages, a need to work longer and harder, and growing economic insecurity. The further effect is growing anger and resentment.

Though the government's policy of interventionism is their logical target, the anger and resentment people feel are typically directed at businessmen and the rich instead. This is a mistake which is fueled for the most part by an ignorant and envious intellectual establishment and media.

And in conformity with this attitude, since the collapse of the stock market bubble, which was in fact created by the Federal Reserve's policy of credit expansion and then pricked by its temporary abandonment of that policy, government prosecutors have adopted what appears to be a particularly vengeful policy toward executives guilty of financial dishonesty, as though their actions were responsible for the widespread losses resulting from the collapse of the bubble. Thus the former head of a major telecommunications company was recently given a twenty-five year prison sentence. Other top executives have suffered similarly.

Even more ominously, the government's power to obtain mere criminal indictments has become equivalent to the power to destroy a firm, as occurred in the case of Arthur Andersen, the major accounting firm. The threatened use of this power was then sufficient to force major insurance brokerage firms in the United States to change their managements to the satisfaction of New York State's Attorney General. There is no way to describe such developments other than as conviction and punishment without trial and as extortion by the government. These are major steps along a very dangerous path.

Fortunately, there is still sufficient freedom in the United States to undo all the damage that has been done. There is first of all the freedom to publicly name it and denounce it.

More fundamentally, there is the freedom to analyze and refute the ideas that underlie the destructive policies that have been adopted or that may be adopted. And that is what is critical. For the fundamental factor underlying interventionism and, of course, socialism as well, whether Nazi or Communist, is nothing but wrong ideas, above all, wrong ideas about economics and philosophy.

There is now an extensive and growing body of literature that presents sound ideas in these two vital fields. In my judgment, the two most important authors of this literature are Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand. An extensive knowledge of their writings is an indispensable prerequisite for success in the defense of individual freedom and the free market.

This institute, The Ludwig von Mises Institute, is the world's leading center for the dissemination of Mises's ideas. It presents a constant flow of analyses based on his ideas, analyses that appear in its academic journals, its books and periodicals, and in its daily website news articles that deal with the issues of the moment. It educates college and university students, and young instructors, in his ideas and the related ideas of other members of the Austrian school of economics. It does this through the Mises Summer University, the Austrian Scholars Conferences, and a variety of seminars.

Two very major ways of fighting for freedom are to educate oneself to the point of being able to speak and write as articulately in its defense as do the scholars associated with this institute or, if one does not have the time or inclination to pursue such activity, then to financially support the Institute in its vital work to whatever extent one can.

It is possible to turn the tide. No single person can do it. But a large and growing number of intelligent people, educated in the cause of economic freedom, and speaking up and arguing in its defense whenever possible, is capable of gradually forming the attitudes of the culture and thus of the nature of its political and economic system.

You in this audience are all already involved in this great effort. I hope you will continue and intensify your commitment.

-----------------

* This article was delivered as a lecture at the Mises Institute's "The Economics of Fascism, Supporters Summit 2005." It is copyright © 2005, by George Reisman. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute it electronically and in print, other than as part of a book. (Email notification is requested). All other rights reserved.

[Tribesman]

Its already in the name, nationalsocialism, Mr. Wise.
What an incredibly silly attempt at making a point long after your point has been blasted:doh:
I wonder what North Korea calls itself?
It must be a democracy as its in the name mr not so wise at all:rotfl2:

Nice to see you include an exercise in logical fallacy by an ex randian muppet.
It really contains plenty of gems of sheer stupidity.
I never realised the roman empire was socialist, as was your beloved Hanseatic utopia

[Ducimus]

Ah yes the 'Nazis were really socialists' line - as peddled by right-wing revisionist 'historians' who don't actually give a %*#@ about history,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party

The National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, abbreviated NSDAP), commonly known in English as the Nazi Party, was a political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945. Its predecessor, the German Workers' Party (DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920. The term Nazi is German and stems from Nationalsozialist, due to the pronunciation of Latin -tion- as -tsion- in German (rather than -shon- as it is in English), with German Z being pronounced as 'ts'.

http://history.howstuffworks.com/world-war-ii/national-socialist-german-workers-party.htm

National Socialist German Workers' Party, the political party, led by Adolf Hitler, that ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. Its members were called Nazis. It was founded as the German Workers' party in 1918, and "National Socialist" was added to the name in 1920

http://www.history.com/topics/nazi-party
Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the National Socialist German Workers' Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and ruled Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945. Founded in 1919 as the German Workers' Party, t
http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/250x250/38901408.jpg

[Skybird]

I add that the basic concepts and ideas of the Nazis already were ready and prepared before the first world war. And quite some forethinkers of it held positions in organisations and associations that could and were seen as being concerned about social issues ands socialist policies. Especially infamous was Werner Sombart, who was chairman of the Verein für Sozialpolitik, and of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie, long before WWII. Already before WWI he agitated extremely aggressively and maliciously against British rationalism and humanism. He, and some more, became the propagandists on which the Nazi's later agitation was basing on, and they were spewing - beside their claim to work for the social interests of Germans - a form of nationalism that even for the standards of the time before WW1 was extremely vitriolic.

Also mind you, that the totalitarian basis shared by socialism and communism and national-socialism created the paradox that in the times before WWII and before the Nazis coming to power, national-socialists and communists often changed sides and turned from the one to the other, or were both at the same time. It seems it did not happen rarely. The closeness of methods - totalitarianism and police force - between nationalists, communists and later Nazis, made this possible. As I often said in threads from past years: ideologies like Stalinism, Nazism, Socialism and Muhammeddanism are not that different at all and are all offsprings of the same spirit - totalitarianism, and a determination to accept dictatorship for control.

The following link leads to a chapter from a German book I own. It is about why German liberalism is so weak and why the German reply to British rationality and enlightenment was irrationality, emotional confusion and this thing called "Deutsche Romantik". The fundament why the Nazis later became so strong in Germany, already were laid in the 30-years-war - the 17th century, that is. I digitized this text once to send it to German friends.

LINK (GERMAN) (https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1zc41kt57ti7lkd/OOQ2bihPZH/Braunschweig%20-%20deutscher%20Antiliberalismus.odt)


Der englische Schriftsteller und Auslandskorrespondent F. A. Voigt kam 1939 zu dem Schluss, dass der Marxismus zum Faschismus und zum Nationalsozialismus geführt hat, weil er in allen wesentlichen Punkten Faschismus und Nationalsozialismus zugleich ist. Peter Drucker schrieb im gleichen Jahr: „Der vollständige Bankrott des Glaubens, man könne zu Freiheit und Gleichheit durch den Marxismus gelangen, hat Russland auf denselben Weg zu einem totalitären, rein negativen und nicht-ökonomischen Gesellschaftssystem der Unfreiheit und Ungleichheit getrieben, den Deutschland gegangen ist". Charakteristisch ist diesbezüglich der Verlauf der geistigen Entwicklung bei vielen Führern des Nationalsozialismus und des Faschismus. Jedem, der den Aufstieg dieser Bewegungen in Italien oder Deutschland betrachtet, ist die große Zahl von führenden Männern, von Mussolini abwärts auffällig, die als Sozialisten begonnen und als Faschisten geendet haben. Es verdient in diesem Zusammenhang Erwähnung, dass Hitler (einerlei aus welchen Gründen) in einer seiner öffentlichen Reden noch im Februar 1941 erklärte: „Nationalsozialismus und Marxismus sind im Grunde dasselbe".
Es war in Deutschland bezeichnend, dass ein junger Kommunist ziemlich leicht zum Nationalsozialisten bekehrt werden konnte und umgekehrt. Für beide ist der wahre Feind, der Mensch, mit dem sie nichts gemeinsam hatten und den zu überzeugen aussichtslos war: der Liberale alter Schule. Sie wussten beide nur zu genau, dass mit den Liberalen, welchen es mit dem Glauben an die Freiheit wirklich Ernst war, keinen Kompromiss geben konnte. Der tiefe Antiliberalismus der Deutschen erklärt zu einem nicht geringen Teil das Rätsel, wie ein so altes, erfahrenes Kulturvolk sich einem so geistlosen Barbaren wie Hitler ausliefern konnte. Es besteht Grund zur Annahme, dass die demokratische Stabilität Deutschlands nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, auf die so oft mit stolzgeschwellter Brust hingewiesen wird, in Wahrheit lediglich vom ökonomischen Erfolg gewährleistet wird. Denn anders als England oder die Vereinigten Staaten besitzt Deutschland keine eigenständige, in Generationen gewachsene und behauptete Tradition der Freiheit. Mit Blick auf die Wiedervereinigung Deutschlands hat der marxistische Philosoph Andre Gorz (1923-2007) bemerkt, die Ereignisse belegten trotz allem, dass die Idee der Freiheit in Deutschland „keine Heimstatt" hat. Schon Theodor Heuss hatte vom kleinmütigen und unreflektierten Antiliberalismus vieler Menschen in Deutschland gesprochen. Die Ursachen für die verhängnisvolle geistige Verankerung von Etatismus, Nationalismus und Kollektivismus im Denken der Deutschen liegen vor allem auch in den geistigen Strömungen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, die, trotz der inzwischen eingetretenen katastrophalen Folgen des Kollektivismus (Nationalsozialismus und Sozialismus/Kommunismus), auch heute noch weiterhin ihre verhängnisvolle Wirkung in den Köpfen vieler Menschen verbreiten. Die romantische Gesinnung der Deutschen hat die Aufklärung schon sehr frühzeitig in Deutschland „coupiert" (Johannes Gross).

[AndyJWest]

Skybird, I said historian, not paid-up-member of the bat****-crazy Mises cult.

And yes, Ducimus, any idiot knows that the Nazi's called themselves 'national-socialists'. Anyone other than an idiot would bother to actually learn what 'national-socialism' stood for.

Here's a few clues:

They were funded by German industrialists.

They were put into power by right-wing conservatives - who (probably wrongly) saw the possibility of the left taking power in Germany.

[Skybird]

Man, you make more pointless noise than a flock of twittering geese. I gave you plenty of arguments in a substantial text, and you just behave like troll.

I conclude you are one, then.

[blip deleted from Skybird's radar]

[Sailor Steve]

Okay, it's time for everybody to take a step back and a deep breath. I let it go on for awhile because you guys were having fun fighting each other, and it was fairly confined. Now the level of hostility seems to have taken a step up and the name-calling is increasing while the level of debate is decreasing.

You have all made some good points, but from here on in let's do it without the demeaning language. You can argue without insulting each other.

Only warning.

[Penguin]

Today I learned that socialism is solely an economic concept.
Following the logic of self given names, no Nazis could have existed outside of Germany, as they were 'national'.
Bonus trivia question: how big was the percentage of workers in the worker's party NSDAP? How big was the percentage of farmers and state employees?

Es verdient in diesem Zusammenhang Erwähnung, dass Hitler (einerlei aus welchen Gründen) in einer seiner öffentlichen Reden noch im Februar 1941 erklärte: „Nationalsozialismus und Marxismus sind im Grunde dasselbe".

citation needed.
So the guy who thought Marxism was a jewish invention compared his ideology to theirs? :o
The same guy who held speeches like "Der Nationalsozialismus als Weltanschauung, der Marxismus ein Wahnsinn!", or the famous speech in front of the Düsseldorf Industrie Club, where he stated to rot out Marxism?
C'mon, even Nolte, who started the "Historikerstreit", an advocate of the totalitarism theory, denies any love of Adolf for Karl's theories.

[Tribesman]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party


http://history.howstuffworks.com/world-war-ii/national-socialist-german-workers-party.htm


http://www.history.com/topics/nazi-party

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/250x250/38901408.jpg
So rubbish its laughable.
Hey I thought retard was classed as an insult on this forum?

None of the links fit the bill , that's a bit errr... backwards isn't it.:yep:

All of the links show the core policies of the "national socialists" which can in no way be called socialist and are in fact directly contrary to the core of that flawed ideology.


Man, you make more pointless noise than a flock of twittering geese. I gave you plenty of arguments in a substantial text, and you just behave like troll.

I conclude you are one, then.

[blip deleted from Skybird's radar]
Is that another example of a temper tantrum where someone chooses to ignore posts because they have completely rubbished his claims?

It really is simple, North Korea proves the point, another indisputable proof would be Irelands PDs.
How were they "progressive"?
Its in their name so they must be ...right??????:doh:

[Cybermat47]

Guys, calm down. At least you don't have Tony Abbot in charge.

[AndyJWest]

Skybird, it is a demonstrable fact that the only people denying the historical reality that the Nazis were from the far right are themselves of the fringes of right-wing politics.

It is an obscene lie. Put about by people who are willing to exploit the deaths of deaths of millions for political advantage.

[Jimbuna]

Cool heads everyone...no name calling or insults.

[Tribesman]

Skybird, it is a demonstrable fact that the only people denying the historical reality that the Nazis were from the far right are themselves of the fringes of right-wing politics.

One only has to look at the alliances of the german parties prior to WW2 to see that the NSDAP is firmly rooted in the conservative, nationalist and far right field.
To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities....unless they are sub humans, leftists, communists, socialists, gays, wrong religion, disabled, mixed race, too foreign, gypsy.....in which case no rights and off to the camps for slaughter in the name of equality.

[AndyJWest]

One only has to look at the alliances of the german parties prior to WW2 to see that the NSDAP is firmly rooted in the conservative, nationalist and far right field.
To each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities....unless they are sub humans, leftists, communists, socialists, gays, wrong religion, disabled, mixed race, too foreign, gypsy.....in which case no rights and off to the camps for slaughter in the name of equality.

Exactly. One can look at where they came from, who supported them, and what they did. Or one can look at their name, see 'socialist' in it, and bury ones head in the sand. Names are just labels. History is about deeds.

[Tribesman]

Exactly. One can look at where they came from, who supported them, and what they did. Or one can look at their name, see 'socialist' in it, and bury ones head in the sand. Names are just labels. History is about deeds.
Indeed, one of my favourites is the early 30s manifesto of theirs on agriculture.
bad harvests...its the jews, low prices.... its the jews, technology ...its the jews, land...its the jews, availability of markets.... its the jews.
They really were a one trick pony based on nothing but racial discrimination and a weird belief in "Aryan" supremacy.

But like I said earlier that muppet from Mises Sky used has to stretch definitions to fit his agenda by such an extent that they then include all of the ideologies he supports and all his visions of political and economic utopia.
It really is laughable.
Though I suppose its inevitable that the far right want to try and distance themselves from the far right as the far right do have a tendency to be somewhat crazy and most people really don't want to be associated with the far right even when they are the far right.

[MH]

Denying that national socialism has nothing to do with socialism is pure bullox.

Calm down it does not mean that some flavors socialism must be bad...no need for all this nonsense gymnastics lol.

:rotfl2:

[AndyJWest]

Denying that national socialism has nothing to do with socialism is pure bullox.

Calm down it does not mean that some flavors socialism must be bad...no need for all this nonsense gymnastics lol.

:rotfl2:

Ignoring historical evidence is complete bullox.

[Dan D]

Skybird, do you realise that you have been fooled by the author of the article you have linked to?
True, the headline says „EU proposal to monitor intolerant citizens“, but if you read the actual text, it says that it is a non-governmental organisation that made a proposal to a comittee of the European Parliament. So we are not talking about a EU proposal but about a proposal made to the EU, which is not the same.

So one could say that the author is too stupid to sum up his own text in a headline but of course the author knows better. He made his statement with concious ignorance but that still makes him a lousy think tank and you fell into his trap.

What is the author's intention anyway?
„While European leaders are busy expressing public indignation over reports of American espionage operations in the European Union, the European Parliament is quietly considering a proposal that calls for the direct surveillance of any EU citizen suspected of being "intolerant."“

Oh okay, he wants to distract us from the NSA scandal.

Reading skills!

That Hitler Socialist dictatorship nonsense is even worse. My oral exam in history as A-level subject to graduate from school comes to my mind.
They gave me Hitler's 1932 speech to the industry club and 30 minutes time to read, analyse and explain it.

Hitler held his speech in order to gain support from the big business. The Allies later used this speech as evidence in the Nürnberg trials to prove that those German business leaders whom they had charged for war crimes knew early that Hitler would start a war of aggression because in his speech of 1932 Hitler made that already clear to them..

The German business leaders of 1932 too were sceptic about the „Socialist“ and „Worker's“ part in Hitler's „National Socialist Worker's Party“. Hitler adresses that in his speech.

If I would have told the 4 history teachers who were holding my exam that because of the name of the party Hitler was a Socialist and labour leader, I don't think that I would have graduated from school, because in his speech:
"Hitler explained to the assembled magnates that they had nothing to fear from the Nazi Party. He sold his dream of a Germany with the trade unions crushed and with the workers controlled by the state in co-operation with industrial owners. Hitler also attacked Communism and Socialism and those who supported both.“
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/dusseldorf_speech_1932.htm

FAIL!

[Skybird]

The same people who claim that socialism is not an economic concept, are the (left-leaning, usually) people who also reject that human rights cannot be made reasonble sense of different from understanding them on a basis of property rights that give people the right to interact with material and real-world-grounded opportunities to improve their lives in accordance with said claimed rights. Property rights, human rights as being something material?! Far to profane! It has to be idealistically, it has to be brain-heavy, it has to be felt and imagined and fantasized! But the right for free speech for example does not mean Tim has the right to yell his opinion out where ever he wants, or knocking on other people's doors and shoving it down their throats. He has the right to rent a room, invite for an assembly, refuse guests to his liking, and on that assembly then announce his opinion. He has to won the place, and he has to respect the right of others not wanting to need to care for him. He also has no right to demand the newspapers owned by Tom must print his opinion, that is not freedom of speech. He has a right to buy printing space from Tom and pay him for printing it. All this - is about opportunity and ressources Tim has the right to buy. He thus "owns" them, and within that property right he bought he has the right then to announce his opinion. In principle, it is not different with any other construction you can use to illustrate this example. Without property rights, freedom of speech means NOTHING.

That is why huma n rights are so very wishy-washy today, so vague and nebulous, abstract and philosophical only. It's also a reason why human rights now got added so distorted absurdities like they are being implemented by ingeniious theoretics. A human right to have a bank account.

Needless to say that socialism is an economic concept, or better, the absence and denial and deconstruction of working economic principles, morals and ethics. In the end it means nothing else than that what somebody wants he can steal from somebody else by making the claim he needs it. What people deserve, shall play no rule anymore, like healthy price indexing and value assessment on the market shall not play any role anymore. Like the text I originally linked shows in clearness, any state wanting to be socialist, must become a totalitarian player, else he would not be able to enforce socialism. And we see that in history: all socialist and communist experiments had strong displays of right this totalitarian basic nature.

Nietzsche once said the German most beloved symbolic image is the cloud. It is vague, nebulous, unclear, it has no clear contours, everything can be read into it, it holds no form, but constantly changes. The Germans have had two socialist dictatorships in a row - and they still adore it and yearn for it. That is because they refuse to see clear, and Platonists they are (different to the British-American world, which favoured Aristotle), they have an now inbuilt sympathy for dictatorial rule. Germasn are the born submissive citizens. That's why I say since years that the Germans, although they have more at risk and pay more than anyone else in Europe for the EU, will be among the last people in Europe to revolt against the EU dictatorship suffocating the continent and destroying our wealth. They crave even for more, they even embrace needing to pay higher taxes for it...! And more and more state adminsitratrion, more regulation, more social presents (even if they increase debts). The Germans, always high by their emotions which are a drug for them they crave for and which they are unable to control, are a hopeless case, believe me. Obedience and submission to the state, trust in collectives and miracle-believing that socialism makes all things well is something that gets soaked up with the mothermilk over here. Only the French, originators of the blood-thirsty mob that killed some unlucky guards to free some criminals and villains from the Bastille and making a big hype of this and the following bloodshed, are can compare to the Germans in their love for life in socialist miracles. Or delusions.

Our most successful and competent economic leader who ever headed the ministry of economics, was Ludwig Erhard. He violated party politics, he did not care for power interests of politicians, he started by confronting the Allies and dropping their price controls without even asking them (the following economic improvement that made itself felt withion weeks proved him right), was left standing in the rain by his own "colleagues", he clashed with Adenauer over that old man's claim that economics shall be subordinate and in service of foreign politics and should even accept distortions if that is what foreign politics need. He acted by reason, ratioanlity, and common sense, and thew economic record under his rule showed him right. Poltically, as I said, he becakme soon totally isolated. What was in the interest of the economc healing and the imrpvement of the ordiunary German people'S econo9mic reality, was against the very interests of thre parties, and career politicians.

Politicians do not get elected if telling grim truths. Telling sweet lies, gets them elected. That is one of the problems with democracy that made me strictly opposing it now. Democracy guarantees that the biggest lie-teller, the moron without spine and character, the unscrupulous villain and fraudster, has the best chances: the one who sets up the best show of lies and treason, has best chances top get elected. Democracy fosters the worst in man. Democracy punishes, demotivates the best in man. Democracy loot those who nevertheless try to work honestly and keep communities together by their work. The loot is needed by said political fraudsters, to allow them making bribery gifts to voters. In the end, all social gifts and presents must get payed by the stupid people nevertheless, may it be in state debts and interests, may it be via expropriation via taxing and inflation.

Once you have seen clear these things, you never can go back to tolerating them. You have become unable to tolerate them anymore.

I think since long that Denauer is hopelessly overestimated in Germany. The most important name to mention and to explain the fast rcovery of Germany after the war, was not Adenauer (who would have messed up the economy seriously, if he would have had his ways), but Erhard.

Too materialistic again for some, I assume. But the world is material. Without material control over it, all your high-flying ideals and imaginations - are nothing. People understand this since millenia. Just the present Westerner, drunken by his own hyperintellectuality, thinks he knows it better.

Penguin, for you I have this booktip. You will hate it, I promise. LINK - Roland Baader: Totgedacht. Warum Intellektuelle unsere Welt zerstören. (http://www.amazon.de/Totgedacht-Warum-Intellektuelle-unsere-zerstören/dp/3935197268/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383309084&sr=8-1&keywords=totgedacht) The book shows that all so often it is abstract intellectuals only that are not rooted by their work or excistence in solid, material reality, that have brought havoc and disaster over people and nations, and who are always being fascinated by "Kopfgeburten" (book cover) that destroy freedom, morals, self-responsibility, wealth, and the basis of functioning economics. "Hirnies", we call these walking disasters on two legs. And they have cost mankind dearly. Socialism is such a "Kopfgeburt" as well. And it will sweep european nations and people into the gully once again.

In the end, socialism means nothing else than this: "I want, and somebody else should pay; I desire, and this gives me the right to rob and to loot." It always leads to totalitarian states, necessarily. That is all glory there is in it. Sorry for not being so nebulous as to allow glorifying imagination and projecting dreams of milk and honey onto the vague cloudscreen. I'm a profane materialist, I fear. I lack fantasy.

I put something different against that: everybody according to what he deserves. Equality of rich and poor, male and female before the law. Guarantee of private property. Inviolability of family. Strict separation of politics and money, no state monopoly on money, no worthless paper money, which is nothing else than making debts a currency. Human rights understood as property rights. As small state administration as can be enforced. No socialisation of private or communal debts. Self-responsibility.

All that makes people like me a socialist's nightmare. I'm proud to be. Humanism and socialism cannot play in the same team.

[antikristuseke]

Here you go again, using your facts to counter populist nonsense, some people...:shifty::D
Edit: aimed and Dan

[Penguin]

Denying that national socialism has nothing to do with socialism is pure bullox.


Strasser and Röhm thought so, too - that's why they made a big career in the Third Reich... :88)

[MH]

Strasser and Röhm thought so, too - that's why they made a big career in the Third Reich... :88)

Had been too radical for Hitler.
Probably both of them should had seek employment in USSR.:haha:

[Penguin]

The same people who claim that socialism is not an economic concept,


The "Miles über alles"-article, which is the same exhausting read as any boring Marxist's article (just substitute the M-words), reduces Socialism to an economic concept, which is just wrong. It's a fallacy to look at an ideology purely from an economic angle. Das Kapital for example starts as a purely economic analysis; however the social construct known as Marxism focuses on much more.


are the (left-leaning, usually) people who also reject that human rights cannot be made reasonble sense of different from understanding them on a basis of property rights that give people the right to interact with material and real-world-grounded opportunities to improve their lives in accordance with said claimed rights. Property rights, human rights as being something material?! Far to profane! It has to be idealistically, it has to be brain-heavy, it has to be felt and imagined and fantasized! But the right for free speech for example does not mean Tim has the right to yell his opinion out where ever he wants, or knocking on other people's doors and shoving it down their throats. He has the right to rent a room, invite for an assembly, refuse guests to his liking, and on that assembly then announce his opinion. He has to won the place, and he has to respect the right of others not wanting to need to care for him. He also has no right to demand the newspapers owned by Tom must print his opinion, that is not freedom of speech. He has a right to buy printing space from Tom and pay him for printing it. All this - is about opportunity and ressources Tim has the right to buy. He thus "owns" them, and within that property right he bought he has the right then to announce his opinion. In principle, it is not different with any other construction you can use to illustrate this example. Without property rights, freedom of speech means NOTHING.


Following this logic, public demonstrations should be outlawed, as the participants don't state their opinion on their own soil, but on public (collective) ground?
Regarding the shoving opinions in someone's face, that's why we have in Germany the de-facto right of "negative freedom of speech", or regarding the wording of our own constitution: "negative freedom of opinion" and "negative freedom of information". These cover the right not to voice an opinion and also the right to be left alone from speech or information you do not want.


Needless to say that socialism is an economic concept, or better, the absence and denial and deconstruction of working economic principles, morals and ethics.

Like I said before: also an economic concept. Morals and ethics have the same connection to economics as they have to mathematics, but this is a whole different discussion, after all history and ideology consists of much more than economics.


Nietzsche once said the German most beloved symbolic image is the cloud. It is vague, nebulous, unclear, it has no clear contours, everything can be read into it, it holds no form, but constantly changes. The Germans have had two socialist dictatorships in a row - and they still adore it and yearn for it. That is because they refuse to see clear, and Platonists they are (different to the British-American world, which favoured Aristotle), they have an now inbuilt sympathy for dictatorial rule. Germasn are the born submissive citizens. That's why I say since years that the Germans, although they have more at risk and pay more than anyone else in Europe for the EU, will be among the last people in Europe to revolt against the EU dictatorship suffocating the continent and destroying our wealth. They crave even for more, they even embrace needing to pay higher taxes for it...! And more and more state adminsitratrion, more regulation, more social presents (even if they increase debts). The Germans, always high by their emotions which are a drug for them they crave for and which they are unable to control, are a hopeless case, believe me. Obedience and submission to the state, trust in collectives and miracle-believing that socialism makes all things well is something that gets soaked up with the mothermilk over here. Only the French, originators of the blood-thirsty mob that killed some unlucky guards to free some criminals and villains from the Bastille and making a big hype of this and the following bloodshed, are can compare to the Germans in their love for life in socialist miracles. Or delusions.


A quote, assigned to Lenin said "Wenn die Deutschen eine Revolution am Bahnhof machen wollen, kaufen sie zuerst eine Bahnsteigkarte." :D
However do you really want to deny that submission to the state was not propagandized by any system before the two German dictatorships? The Prussians were pretty keen of it, just as the Monarch rulers in the centuries before, a notable exception maybe being the Frysian Freedom.

However I don't understand your logic: when the Germans don't revolt they are submissive, when the French do so, they are a bloodthirsty mob? :88)


Our most successful and competent economic leader who ever headed the ministry of economics, was Ludwig Erhard. He violated party politics, he did not care for power interests of politicians, he started by confronting the Allies and dropping their price controls without even asking them (the following economic improvement that made itself felt withion weeks proved him right), was left standing in the rain by his own "colleagues", he clashed with Adenauer over that old man's claim that economics shall be subordinate and in service of foreign politics and should even accept distortions if that is what foreign politics need. He acted by reason, ratioanlity, and common sense, and thew economic record under his rule showed him right. Poltically, as I said, he becakme soon totally isolated. What was in the interest of the economc healing and the imrpvement of the ordiunary German people'S econo9mic reality, was against the very interests of thre parties, and career politicians.


K, I swear this is the last time I use the e-word today. Erhard was also a opponent of the total free market economy, that's why he called his concept social market economy (oh nooz, the s-word again :O:) Yet I agree, his idea of partnership between enterprneurs and employees was economic successfull for after-war Germany.


Politicians do not get elected if telling grim truths. Telling sweet lies, gets them elected. That is one of the problems with democracy that made me strictly opposing it now. Democracy guarantees that the biggest lie-teller, the moron without spine and character, the unscrupulous villain and fraudster, has the best chances: the one who sets up the best show of lies and treason, has best chances top get elected. Democracy fosters the worst in man. Democracy punishes, demotivates the best in man. Democracy loot those who nevertheless try to work honestly and keep communities together by their work. The loot is needed by said political fraudsters, to allow them making bribery gifts to voters. In the end, all social gifts and presents must get payed by the stupid people nevertheless, may it be in state debts and interests, may it be via expropriation via taxing and inflation.


So why don't parties who promise milk and honey for everyone have a majority in every Democracy? :hmmm:


Penguin, for you I have this booktip. You will hate it, I promise. LINK - Roland Baader: Totgedacht. Warum Intellektuelle unsere Welt zerstören. (http://www.amazon.de/Totgedacht-Warum-Intellektuelle-unsere-zerstören/dp/3935197268/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383309084&sr=8-1&keywords=totgedacht) The book shows that all so often it is abstract intellectuals only that are not rooted by their work or excistence in solid, material reality, that have brought havoc and disaster over people and nations, and who are always being fascinated by "Kopfgeburten" (book cover) that destroy freedom, morals, self-responsibility, wealth, and the basis of functioning economics. "Hirnies", we call these walking disasters on two legs. And they have cost mankind dearly. Socialism is such a "Kopfgeburt" as well. And it will sweep european nations and people into the gully once again.


Sure, why not - if I find the book for free. I am sure Pol Pot would approve to the concept of Anti-Intellectuism. :)
If you haven't read it yet, I propose you to read "wigan Pier" by the Socialist Orwell. The second part is a brilliant analysis of the people we in Germany call "Kaffehaussozialisten" (coffee-house-socialists) - a very "Broderesk" piece!

Still looking for a source to find where and when Hitler said "Marxism and National-Socialism are basically the same". A quick search says that the sole source to the acclaimed citation is Nicolaus von Below's "Als Hitlers Adjutant", would like to read the speech and the contect of the alleged sentence.

[Skybird]

(...) reduces Socialism to an economic concept, which is just wrong. It's a fallacy to look at an ideology purely from an economic angle. Das Kapital for example starts as a purely economic analysis; however the social construct known as Marxism focuses on much more.
Take away the destruction of functional price indexing that socialism as an economic "concept" is, and see how evertyhing else you claim it to be is collapsing and degrading into anarchy. I see the merit of Das Kapital in the observational part. The conclusions I found heavily derailed, and head-heavy. I do not see Marx that much as an ideology-founder. He did not really found an idea by himself, but refused another only, and claiming right to make it his follower's material prey. Somebody blackmailing travellers to pay him protection money or road tax and by that refusing these traveller's moral code or the laws of their society, is not a philosopher by that already. As I see it, Marx motivates people. But a motivation is not already an ideology by itself. Although, for reasons of linguistic convenience, I refer to it as that myself often, yes. But that is laziness on my part, I do not really imply that Marxism is an ideology in a positive meaning of existence. It is more about refusing something, than to be something itself.


Following this logic, public demonstrations should be outlawed, as the participants don't state their opinion on their own soil, but on public (collective) ground?
People cannot own nothing private but share all "public" possession, since that also would imply everybody owns everybody else. And what is it with that public sphere? It is grounds that had been stolen by impostors and criminals, stolen from previous private ownership, and claimed for the "state" now. The state claims the right that it can send or can send not the police to fight off protesters. Anyway, it is property rights defended or lend to the protester. If it were privately owned ground instead, my garden for example,m then indeed I would cl.aim the right to tolerate a protest going on there, or to demand protesters to leave, eventually forcing them out with people I payed and who have sticks with them. It is my property, I must mot allow foreigners doping things in there I do not want.

The right to live, they say. The starvings' right to live. Try to see how far you get in saving them when you do not translate that into property rights, may they be legally or illegally claimed! Just feeling by your heart people have a right to live, means nothing, and saves not a single life. You have to buy the seeds you want to give them, you have to lend the transports and pay for them, you have to pay road taxes to landowners, or bandits illegally claiming that land is theirs, to pass through and bring the aid to those needing it. If you do not own bread or seeds, you have nothing to give to them, and they will die, despite their "right to live". Again, you end up with property rights. May sound profane, may sound materialistic, but all human life is impossible without the profanity of materialism. When times of need emerge, people set priorities, and the basic material needs will be ruled highest, and the subtle qualities of fine arts and philosophic thinking are abandoned first. Man does not live by bread alone, they quote Jesus. Well, try to live without it! Material qualities are Pflicht. Cultural raffinesse is Kür. Send a starving man into the Royal Museum of Arts. His senses first lock on not those nice paintings on the walls, but the table with a food buffet. Gestaltpsychology is right. :)


Like I said before: also an economic concept. Morals and ethics have the same connection to economics as they have to mathematics, but this is a whole different discussion, after all history and ideology consists of much more than economics.
Socialism is a economic concept only in that it is destroying a functional market and monetarian value assessment of things: products and working skill. It has nothing to offer beyond this, and that is no wonder, because as especially the "Austrians" claimed so clearly you cannot know price values of stuff and functions of the economic system in advance, or fix them by your own splendid mathematical formulas: planned economies do not work, and never have worked, always resulting in collapse, poverty, material decline. If socialism is an economic concept, then it is a negative concept. Now take that scheme away, and see what is left of it. All its reasoning bases and grounds on that those producing something of value (value agreed on by other market participants who are willing to trade away something in order to get it) , can be expropriated, and that those not producing something of value (may it be products, may it be their working skill's contribution) have a claim to make against those that do better or earned more. The idea of "justice" in it is the justice of a robber, a parasite who wants to get fed without delivering his own share first. In other words, it has nothing to do with justice. I find that term being overused nowadays anyway. Socialism means that the majority of those benefitting from those producing is growing, and the group of those producing is shrinking. that is where we are today. It always is about explicitly destroying the free price fixing of a quantity or quality in negotiations between free people. The "state" says how much it should be worth. The state pans the price, and it plans what is needed, and what should be produced, and how much. Just that the state may be megalomanias, but it cannot know these things. The beauty of the market is that although you cannot explain how it brings all the variables together and make them functioning, it nevertheless does so. The inherent problem with it is the omnipresent tendency to try to form monopolies . But the biggest monopolist is the state. The state also is the biggest abuser of this privileged position it is in. And this monopolist should be left with planning the economy? That is the fox put in charge of the hen house.

A quote, assigned to Lenin said "Wenn die Deutschen eine Revolution am Bahnhof machen wollen, kaufen sie zuerst eine Bahnsteigkarte." :D
However do you really want to deny that submission to the state was not propagandized by any system before the two German dictatorships? The Prussians were pretty keen of it, just as the Monarch rulers in the centuries before, a notable exception maybe being the Frysian Freedom.
Where have I said so? Of course there was a history before WWI. Submission to the state is extremely strong in Germany, since the 17th century, in principle since its hour of birth, last but not least due to the immense influence of the protestant church also demanding obedience to the state and comparing the state'S authority to the church's paternalism. Protestantism has played a very damning role in the mentality-forming of Germans, unfortunately. Luther - was a disaster. He replaced the Catholic church with himself, so to speak. I do not see that as one bit better, considering quite some highly questionable views and demands of this man. - It was not just the Prussian spirit alone making Germans what they are.


However I don't understand your logic: when the Germans don't revolt they are submissive, when the French do so, they are a bloodthirsty mob? :88)
The French revolt is overestimated: it is not a local revolt to free some thieves and murders from a prison,leading to a tyrannic, bloodthirsty reign of Jacobinian terror, no - it is the grandeur of the now socalled French revolution, the birth of freedom and democracy in Europe! I'm tempted to search up some passages from books I have in mind where the authors have some less friendly assessments of this anarchic mob rampaging the streets and causing shock and horror in the streets for long time to come.


K, I swear this is the last time I use the e-word today. Erhard was also a opponent of the total free market economy, that's why he called his concept social market economy (oh nooz, the s-word again :O:) Yet I agree, his idea of partnership between enterprneurs and employees was economic successfull for after-war Germany.

Erhard understood that any attempt to reach or define "social responsibility" without an economy basing on free markets, was an illusion. He spoke out loud and clear against planned markets and centralised economy. He "overrun" the Allies and risked himself getting into trouble when he simply disposed their system of fixed prices, because the currency reform the Allies were planning to him made no sense without free fluctuating prices and a free market. Currency reforms cannot heal the distortions of planned economies and planned markets, the market must be allowed to recalibrate in order to get rid of distortions caused by centralised economy planning. 1948 already, the socialist in Germany staged first protests against him, despite the obvious signs of improvement by his policy. He politically survived these efforts to dispose him and to replace him with propagators of planned economy, and he argued that free price finding by market participants was key to forcing the economy to constantly correct and improve (an incentive you have deleted in planned economies, you have replaced it with the incompetence of necessarily clueless planners). Braunschweig quotes Erhard by his use of the term "das deutsche Erb-Übel": greed and envy, and living with one hands in the other's pockets. Erhard often collided with Adenauer over several things, among them Erhard'S demand that the state must do all what it can to guarantee value-stable money and allow the freedom for price to find their fixing freely, and uninfluenced by politics and regulation, and neither this nor other economic concepts should be distorted for the purpose of pleasing foreign political goals: the economy is not a servant of foreign politics.
He also was against forming a Europe with united administrative or economic structures, for him this only opened the door for growing bureaucracy and corruption, increasing state governance and state regulation. Also, economically he saw no need for European institutions. He argued that free trade works much better for securing the peace between nations and people, due to the mutual interests of all participating sides. Needless to say he also was strictly refusing that one state should pay for the ambitions of another state, or its debts, namely that Germany should pay for French dreams of centralisation and dominance.

The "social quality" in his thinking that you referred to, is not the same "social" as socialists or the SPD understand it. Erhard argued that people need to be allowed work freely and make their decisions freely in order to live their life and earn their income and profits freely, in dignity and self-responsibility - that si the social market economy Erhard was ab out. Socialists and the SPD just try ot legitimise looting and robbing from the "rich", by the self-claimed "under-privileged". Making all equal - not before the law necessarilyl but equal by theor purse, allowing nobody to own more than anyone else - that is the socialist dream. In other words: nobody owns anything, but implying that all own everything - even every single one of those 7 billion people on this planet. Even an alternative system where everybody owns more than in socialsim and so all are better off, but some own even more than others, is rejected by them, according to them it is more "just" that all have less, but this "less" on the same basic level of possession. As Churchill put it: in capitalism, the wealth is distributed unequally. In socialism, poverty is distributed equally. And psychologically, people prefer this indeed, it has been shown in social and psychological experiments. The motive behind this irrationality is: greed and envy. Which are two other words for socialism, imo.

In the end, Erhard was isolated from all beginning on, taking fire from all sides, even his own party. As I always say, all democratic parties are socialists, else they do not know how to get elected (EU moron Juncker once said it plain and simple, quoting him by memory, so do not nail me on every single word: "Of course we know better what needs to be done, and of course we could do better. But then we would not get elected.") Seen that way, it is even more remarkable what Erhard was able to achieve against all odds. I respect him for his courage, and integrity, and uncompromised defense of self-responsibility, and freedom. But most people do not want self-responsibility, they want to be led to the feeding troughs and have them filled for free. Erhard propagated hard work, private saving and not giving up responsibility for one's own decisions, also that one cannot spend more than what one has produced. That was what he understood to be the dignity of man, and that dignity was what he understood to be social. And the tool to allow that social quality blossoming was the free market economy. And so the idea of social market economy. It was anything but the redistribution frenzies they nowadays sell us as claimed "justice" and "equality"! So, necessarily, he had everybody against him. Just that his recipes worked and formed positive results was what kept him in office so long. Really appreciating it and linking it to the man, I think most Germans did not, but one would better need to ask some time witnesses, maybe. I think the Germans just took it for granted, the wheel of time turning.


So why don't parties who promise milk and honey for everyone have a majority in every Democracy? :hmmm:

They have. Them all present themselves as messiahs saving the world without blood and sweat, sacrifices or conflicts. And where sacrifices and efforts get mentioned, they immediately get glorified and put into contexts so minimal that is goes unspoken that it does not really mean any nuisance to comply with their needs. Easy going, man! And for free!

The Merkelianists, the Socialists, the Communists, the eco-fascists - they all preach blossoming meadows and success of the German model, stable currencies, no German payments for the Euro, stable income when people have become old, economy running well, and endlessly so on. In the end, they all tax like crazy, push up debts even more, steal and redistribute, regulate, command, print more paper money. They all have become socialists, even the FDP, which i never understood to be a represent of true liberalism, btw - it is a cheap caricature at best. I also do not spare the AfD from my criticism, they try to live a hybrid's life: saying No to the Euro, but not with the needed consequence, but wanting to split it up, and at the same time fully confessing to the very fundament of what has brought up the Euro andf the criminal conspiracy around it: they nevertheless support the EU and its amok-running politeska.


Sure, why not - if I find the book for free. I am sure Pol Pot would approve to the concept of Anti-Intellectuism. :)
If you haven't read it yet, I propose you to read "wigan Pier" by the Socialist Orwell. The second part is a brilliant analysis of the people we in Germany call "Kaffehaussozialisten" (coffee-house-socialists) - a very "Broderesk" piece!
Thanks, I'll keep it in mind.

[Skybird]

And I want to remind of this. Argue with these ethics, if you can.


“Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions–and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

“But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made–before it can be looted or mooched–made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.’

“To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss–the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery–that you must offer them values, not wounds–that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade–with reason, not force, as their final arbiter–it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability–and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

Ayn Rand: "Francisco's Money Speech" (excerpt) from Atlas Shrugged

Man, one could engrave this in stone and be called a saint for doing so.

[Tribesman]

And I want to remind of this. Argue with these ethics, if you can.

That's easy.
What a pile of tripe:yep:
So many gaping flaws its almost infantile in its approach.

Man, one could engrave this in stone and be called a saint for doing so.
Only by people who swallow Rands nonsense like others swallow the Marx nonsense.
Being called a "saint" by such people is really no praise at all.
I suppose there is a difference between the two, Marx wrote a crap political theory which doesn't work, Rand wrote a crap novel which some people swallow as a political ideal

[AndyJWest]

This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

Yes.

[Skybird]

This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?
---
Yes.


“Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

“Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

“Or did you say it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It’s the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money–and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another–their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

(...)

“Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard–the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money–the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law–men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims–then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

Ayn Rand - Francisco's Money Speech

[Tribesman]

Yes.
Why?
Its all the fanciful conditionals which are the product of her drug addled mind that make it complete nonsense.
On reflection perhaps the comparison to Marx is a bit unfair on poor deluded Karl.
Lets put it another way instead.
If a Hubbardian and a Randroid exchanged books they would in effect be simply looking in a mirror.

[AndyJWest]

Living by a 'code of existence' that reduces everything to mere 'tools' and 'symbols' (regardless of what the symbols represent - though for Rand, they seem to represent nothing but themselves) is dehumanising. Where is empathy? Where is love? What room is there for emotion at all in Rand's world? It is all utopian nonsense anyway. And while utopias may occasionally be interesting to imagine, I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in one...

[Sailor Steve]

:spammm:
Why is that spam? People have long made jokes about Sky's "wall of text" posts, but in fact most of his posts are well-researched and thought-out.

Sailor Steve would accuse me of cluttering up the thread!
And he still will. While you are doing better at using the multi-quote button there is really no no reason to quote the entire long post, especially when you're not replying to it.

:rotfl2:and REDOCTOBER would say he couldn't read it!
He's more likely to say he can't understand your post than Sky's.

I bend the knee to the Gauleiter of Garroulousness:har:
Now that was funny. :sunny: On the other hand it's considered bad form to laugh at your own jokes. It makes you look like you're afraid no one else will.

[Tribesman]

Living by a 'code of existence' that reduces everything to mere 'tools' and 'symbols' (regardless of what the symbols represent - though for Rand, they seem to represent nothing but themselves) is dehumanising. Where is empathy? Where is love? What room is there for emotion at all in Rand's world? It is all utopian nonsense anyway. And while utopias may occasionally be interesting to imagine, I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in one...
You miss the point, Rands fanciful ideology is not utopian, it is fundamentally flawed at every level making it entirely dystopian.

[Skybird]

Living by a 'code of existence' that reduces everything to mere 'tools' and 'symbols' (regardless of what the symbols represent - though for Rand, they seem to represent nothing but themselves) is dehumanising. Where is empathy? Where is love? What room is there for emotion at all in Rand's world? It is all utopian nonsense anyway. And while utopias may occasionally be interesting to imagine, I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in one...

The 'code of existence' you complain about, is described by Rand as the qualities she mentions in the paragraphs that you seem to completely ignore in their content and implications. Especially a causal link between causes and effects, and her rejection of plundering and slavery as principles for interhuman interaction, disguising them as "social". Neither Rand nor me accept claims on social obligations if they just serve the purpose of stealing the deserved earnngs of the good and giving it to those not deserving and of lesser merits.

The decision whether i help somebody or not, should be left to where it belongs. It should be left with me, when it is about my ressources that are to be jsed on that. You do not know when and why I choose to intervene. And it does not matter that you do. That it is my volntary decision for or against ist, what counts. I do not accept benefitters of greed-led redistribution competitions and career-politicians anymore to decide in my place and then oblige me to pay for their decisions.

And emotions, you mentioned. It is strange, to me the positive characters in the novel show very strong, passionate emotions. But these are emotions grounding in honesty, self-reliance and strength - not this miserable wishy-washy that is so popular today and that aims at making the good ones feeling guilty for their goodness and accepting the purpose of the miserable ones wanting to suck their lifeblood and money.

I am empathic, absolutely. But I do not loose my head over it. It is the head that enables men to adress needs and solve problems, not the heart.Wallowing in emotions of pity never has saved a single life, ever. Empathy is not the call for blindly nursing just everybody who makes a claim for what is yours.

One year ago or so there started a debate in Germany. It was when Bill Gates made his call for billionaires sharing their wealth and give donations to projects of his foundation, sometthing like that. The socialists here in Germany almost exploded in anger. Free people of wealth freely deciding if and fkr what purpose they give donations? The German , eft immediately refused that, and claimed that these antisocial rich people should be forced by law fo give their donations to the politicians instead, and that the politicians then decide for them.

Must the underhanded and malicious bigotry here really be explained any further? I only say this: there is a huge social activity business in place now, and many people's careers and jobs, incomes and election chances depend on that this not only not changes, but is getting boosted in size even more. I call it social-fascism, due to its omnipresence and imperial claim to surrender to it, unconditionally.

And that is pushing more and more people into dependence from the wellfare state.That is wanted, because it secures politicians their thankfulness, while making the people weak and defenceless, robbing their dignity, self-esteem, initiative, and freedom. It also ruins our economies, destroyed our money, grows our debts, and make our chidren getting born as slaves to the sins of their fathers.

Empathy, you say? Fine, but not without carefully discriminating between those deserving jt and thkse who don't, and weighing the costs against the gains and weighing the intentions against unwanted effects.

Much of what Rand says in the quotes, is nothing else but common sense, some is consequences of libertarian/Austrian money theory and economic theory.


"Senor d'Anconia," declared the woman with the earrings, "I don't agree with you!"

"If you can refute a single sentence I uttered, madame, I shall hear it gratefully."

"Oh, I can't answer you. I don't have any answers, my mind doesn't work that way, but I don't feel that you're right, so I know that you're wrong."

"How do you know it?"

"I feel it. I don't go by my head, but by my heart. You might be good at logic, but you're heartless."

"Madame, when we'll see men dying of starvation around us, your heart won't be of any earthly use to save them. And I'm heartless enough to say that when you'll scream, 'But I didn't know it!'—you will not be forgiven."

[AndyJWest]

Skybird, you seem to be under the misapprehension that I take your arguments seriously. I don't. I've got better things to do with my time that read the rambling prose of cult followers, whether they are pushing 'libertarian/Austrian money theory', Orgone Therapy, or Dianetics. Not least because such cult followers seem to have a habit of flitting from one cult to the next.

Have you ever been a Scientologist?

[Skybird]

Oh look the troll is back. Obviously not limited to Halloween only.

[Tribesman]

Have you ever been a Scientologist?
I hope you are not suggesting that the Randroids are like the Hubbardian cult:hmmm:
Lets see what the Collective has to say about their master.....


Ayn Rand is the greatest human being who has ever lived.
Atlas Shrugged is the greatest human achievement in the history of the world.
Ayn Rand, by virtue of her philosophical genius, is the supreme arbiter in any issue pertaining to what is rational, moral, or appropriate to man’s life on earth.
Once one is acquainted with Ayn Rand and/or her work, the measure of one’s virtue is intrinsically tied to the position one takes regarding her and/or it.
No one can be a good Objectivist who does not admire what Ayn Rand admires and condemn what Ayn Rand condemns.
No one can be a fully consistent individualist who disagrees with Ayn Rand on any fundamental issue.
Since Ayn Rand has designated Nathaniel Branden as her “intellectual heir,” and has repeatedly proclaimed him to be an ideal exponent of her philosophy, he is to be accorded only marginally less reverence than Ayn Rand herself.
But it is best not to say most of these things explicitly (excepting, perhaps, the first two items). One must always maintain that one arrives at one’s beliefs solely by reason.


Cultish much?

[Jimbuna]

http://imgcash3.imageshack.us/img233/1673/adminwatch2af0.gif

[Tribesman]

http://imgcash3.imageshack.us/img233/1673/adminwatch2af0.gif

Is there something wrong with quoting the leading acolyte(prior to excommunication for hurting her feelings) of the cult in response to a new convert quoting the cults founder in his attempt to proselytize his new faith?

[Jimbuna]

Let me assure you anything I attribute to a sole individual would include a quote from the actual post.

[em2nought]

How are they gonna handle intolerant tourists? :D

[Oberon]

How are they gonna handle intolerant tourists? :D

Send them to Germany. :O: