Category Archives: Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

Does Obama Want To Lynch Rush Limbaugh?

BAB's A List, Barack Obama, Conservatism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Socialism

Our friend, economist George Reisman, is on a roll. Read about George in the previous post, “The Myth That Laissez Faire Is Responsible For Our Financial Crisis.”

Does Obama Want to Lynch Rush Limbaugh?
By George Reisman*

My answer to the question “Does Obama Want to Lynch Rush Limbaugh?” is, no. He and the rest of the Left just want to drive Rush Limbaugh off the air.

Obama has already used the prestige of his office to attack Limbaugh by name. According to The New York Post and Fox News of January 23:

WASHINGTON–President Obama warned Republicans on Capitol Hill today that they need to quit listening to radio king Rush Limbaugh if they want to get along with Democrats and the new administration.

“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.

To get the silence-Limbaugh campaign going, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee yesterday (January 27) launched a petition drive urging people to “EXPRESS [THEIR] OUTRAGE ABOUT RUSH’S COMMENTS” that stated his hope that Obama’s socialistic plans will fail. This followed a warm-up led by assorted news anchors, pundits, and celebrities denouncing Limbaugh in the media.

Here’s is what Limbaugh actually said, back on January 16, and which led to the orchestrated campaign now being waged against him:

“I’ve been listening to Barack Obama for a year-and-a-half. I know what his politics are. I know what his plans are, as he has stated them. I don’t want them to succeed.

If I wanted Obama to succeed, I’d be happy the Republicans have laid [sic] down. And I would be encouraging Republicans to lay [sic] down and support him. Look, what he’s talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the US government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don’t want this to work..… Why is it any different, what’s new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don’t care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: ‘Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.’ Somebody’s gotta say it.”

Actually, as Limbaugh well knows, it’s really not necessary to hope for the failure of Obama’s socialistic policies themselves. If they are adopted, they will fail by virtue of their own nature. But it is perfectly reasonable to hope for the failure of Obama’s efforts to get his policies enacted and to hope that to the extent they are enacted their failure is recognized. This is what Limbaugh clearly meant.

The Left cannot tolerate criticism or dissent. A large proportion of its members are actually Stalinist in their mentality. (This is a far larger proportion than the members of the right who are in favor of the diametric opposite of Stalinism, namely, laissez-faire capitalism, which the Left attacks more and more stridently.)

Serious Leftists, i.e., those who want to establish and maintain actual government ownership or control over the economic system, are all implicitly totalitarians. On the one hand, they want to take total control over people’s lives under the pretext of improving and enriching their lives. But their policies are so bad, cause so much destruction and human suffering, that the potential is created for an explosive outburst of hatred and vengeance against them once the public draws the logically inescapable conclusion that it is they and their policies who are responsible. To stay in power and keep socialism in existence, they have to prevent this from happening by crushing all possibility of dissent.

Limbaugh is a major thorn in the side of the Left. They need to remove him, because his criticism serves to slow their advance and might even help to stop them in their tracks.

That’s why I’m for Limbaugh and I too hope Obama fails at every turn in his efforts to expand the powers of government.

*Copyright © 2009, by George Reisman. George Reisman, Ph.D. is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute. His web site is www.capitalism.net. A pdf replica of his book can be downloaded to the reader’s hard drive simply by clicking on the book’s title Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics and then saving the file when it appears on the screen.

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Posted at George Reisman’s Blog on Economics, Politics, Society, and Culture at 1/28/2009 02:11:00 PM

Hamas Uses Human Shields (Dah!)

Iraq, Islam, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Jihad, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Propaganda, Terrorism, The West

The liberal mindset infesting the West cannot comprehend what the hopelessly left-liberal Israel is up against.

A picture paints a thousand words:

Here Gazans, acting as an Ummah, casually describe the practice of galvanizing warm bodies behind which their warriors can cower. And Terror TV reports the protocol straight faced, with embellishments. What liberals—the far left as well as the far-gone libertarian and paleo factions—don’t get, is what Hamas’s Ismail Haniya explained quite clearly.

Having figured out Israel’s Achilles Heel some time ago, Haniya once snorted to the Washington Post: “Palestinians have Israelis on the run, because they have found their weak spot: Jews love life more than other people, and they prefer not to die.”

Neocon-Style Social Engineering

Economy, Energy, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Neoconservatism, Socialism, Taxation

However you slice it, what you have in Charles Krauthammer is a crypto-leftist. Here he proposes an elaborate tax scheme to shape consumer conduct. After all, that’s why we have know-it-alls like Krauthammer—to lead us toward the light:

[BLOVIATION BEGINS]

“Here is how it works. The simultaneous enactment of two measures: A $1 increase in the federal gasoline tax–together with an immediate $14 a week reduction of the FICA tax. Indeed, that reduction in payroll tax should go into effect the preceding week, so that the upside of the swap (the cash from the payroll tax rebate) is in hand even before the downside (the tax) kicks in.

The math is simple. The average American buys roughly 14 gallons of gasoline a week. The $1 gas tax takes $14 out of his pocket. The reduction in payroll tax puts it right back. The average driver comes out even, and the government makes nothing on the transaction. (There are, of course, more drivers than workers–203 million vs. 163 million. The 10 million unemployed would receive the extra $14 in their unemployment insurance checks. And the elderly who drive–there are 30 million licensed drivers over 65–would receive it with their Social Security payments.)

Revenue neutrality is essential. No money is taken out of the economy. Washington doesn’t get fatter. Nor does it get leaner. It is simply a transfer agent moving money from one activity (gasoline purchasing) to another (employment) with zero net revenue for the government. …”

[SNIP]

Incentivizing good behavior (“drive less and shift to fuel-efficient cars”), and penalizing bad is in the purview of the big, overweening neoconservative government. This has been the Bush mandate. And it’s of a piece with Obama’s impetus.

Hear it straight from the ass’s mouth: “The whole idea is to reward those who drive less and to disadvantage those who drive more. … we support such incentives because … Decreased oil consumption is a … desirable national good.”

Who is this Royal “We” you speak of, Krauthammer, you statist?

Inoculate yourself against the gaseous one with “The Goods On Gas.”

Updated: Older Liberals Like Me

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, EU, Ilana Mercer, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism

James Burnham on classical liberals of the nineteenth century:

“Older liberals tended to be patriotic and nationalistic. They believed in the self-government, independence and sovereignty of their own country, and also in the right of other nations and peoples to be independent and self-governing. They were ready to fight, and did fight… There was little trace of pacifism in nineteenth century liberalism; rather more imperialism than pacifism.”

“As rationalists they believed that … other things being equal, peace among nations is better than war. But Peace had a modest priority; there were a number of other things, Liberty prominent among them, more important than Peace.” (Suicide of the West, 1964, p. 172)

In some respects, modern-day libertarians are closer to left-liberals than classical liberals—in preaching pacifism, and in their disregard for notion of the nation and its place among nations.

Update I (Jan. 3): Speaking of nineteenth-century liberals like myself, “Eurosceptic Czech President Vaclav Klaus” is a good example. Klaus opposes the European Union for its sovereignty sundering supranational regulation, and “stubbornly refuses to fly the EU flag.”

It’s a great shame that his people, who once cheered this free-thinking, free marketeer, are turning against him—and their better instincts—and toward the prevailing, pitiful PC around them. Resisting propaganda is never easy.