From a reply in a thread @ HotAir on the just-released Finance Committee Healthcare Reform Bill:
Liberalism at its core is coercion and force. For all the moral preening the Left does about how much they care and how heartless we conservatives are the truth is quite the opposite. There is nothing kind about using the force of government to compel ostensibly free citizens to surrender significant portions of their labor and property (income) to the state to serve the purposes not of the nation but of the State, i.e. the government.
Liberalism makes half the population servants to the other half of the population through various social programs that cannot be opted out of even though our lives are diminished by the confiscation of our earnings.
Liberalism root and branch is anathema to the American tradition of individualism as well as poisonous to liberty for how can liberty exist when the state seeks to control the lives of individuals rather than the individual himself? Liberals are always trying to claim the moral high ground but how can this be a valid claim when their entire agenda can only be enacted by force?
Conservatism is the truly compassionate ideology because it seeks to free, and keep free, the individual from the state. I do not now and will never work for the state and will die fighting against it if I must.
DerKrieger on October 19, 2009
Talk about cutting to the chase. I don't know who DerKrieger is, but I'd vote for him.
Back on topic, here's an interesting article about a facet of liberalism that ties in, I think.
utemia, It looks as if you are saying "hitler is not evil to you if you are considered to be of the master race by him". Or "hitler is not evil to you if you are a firm believer in nazim"... or maybe even both together...
Which is just plain stupid. Aryans who aren't nazis will still consider him evil. And anyone that is a nazi will not consider him evil, but only because they are evil too.
Taltamir: I was referring to Hitler's contemporaries in Germany between the years 1933-1945.During that timeframe, if you were a party member and kept your mouth otherwise shut and said the right things in front of the right people, there were alot of benefits like a secure job, enough to eat (remeber that was the time after the great depression and huge reparationpayments following WW1) and a high living standard. If you were a good obedient little average citizen Joe - or in this instance Fritz/Hans or Kurt - you were able to lead a good life even.
I think that article is derogatory from its first sentence - fits right in with the usual language used in US politics.
I don't really see how this style is any different of that of what the writer accuses the liberals off. They're all the same, and unless people are actually willing to stop throwing insults at each other the trenchlines won't move in either way. Jesus..
People have universally resented the "keep your mouth shut and toe the line or bad things happen", even if they paid well.
That wasn't the issue here, though. Even if they resented it, it wasn't evil for them, in fact many enjoyed that time before WW2 as it brought stabilty and prosperity for the majority of people. It is a weird fact that they did not percieve the nazi ideology as evil nor that many thought that what the Nazi's were doing was not wrong.
It's difficult to wrap my head around that on a good day, but Hitler was great at advertising and propaganda and he managed to sell his twisted crap. He basically started in kindergarden to indoctrinate children. Is a child evil if he believes the twisted ideology he was brought up with and goes to the Gestapo to tell on his best friends parents because they criticized the regime, resulting in said parents to disappear for good in a KZ?
I don't believe the answer is that easy as you make it out to be. Evil or not evil depends more often than not on the perspective.
Interesting theory. Would this qualify as an example? LINK
That isn't indoctrination. It is a very weird hymn but I don't actually saw any indoctrinating content or harmful ideology in that song. The style is a bit reminiscent of communist propaganda songs.. I can't deny that and I probably would not have chosen the personification on Obama like that myself had I been the teacher, but the central themes are all very american and not especially liberal: Equality, Standing strong together and being proud to be an American. The focussing on his accomplishments is strange and out of place but it is a far cry from the methods used by the Nazis for their Propaganda. They had their own ministry just for that.
I'm sure many said the same of the children singing the praise of Hitler in the 30's. It was probably, I'm sure, cute at the time. I'm not suggesting Obama is emulating Hitler, but the parallels are interesting. Different ideology same method.
You are not suggesting? the BUT is all but shouted in the way you phrased your post. What parallels? Hagiographic songs about people are millenia old. There IS no institutionalized mandatory propaganda in the US (unless you count teaching democratic values and civil rights) - and there are no parallels. Cute songs about Hitler weren't what was harmful, it was rather the mathhomework about how much money it costs to keep an disabled child alive, the schoolbook illustrations on how Jews were always thiefs and crooked etc., ideology about why white blue eyed and blond was superior and the rest had to disappear to make room for the "Herrenrasse". And then there was the HJ, Hitler Youth, starting at age 12, were the youth was militarized and brainwashed and taught that Germany was meant to rule the world from the top. Not joining made you automatically one of the enemy and suspicious.
If it only had just been cute songs about Hitler.. as there had been about emperor Wilhelm 2. and probably every other monarch or ruling figure in history, nothing would have happend.
That little song about Obama is all kinds of weird but it is totally harmless. In no way does it parallel any vicious propaganda, neither in methods nor in content.
Remember when I said someone can believe an evil ideology because they are stupid or ignorant, but not evil themselves? Does brainwashed count as a type of ignorant or should I amend my statement?
Bull, that is pure indoctrination. And similarities to communism should be expected from the head of the american communist party.
Not about a sitting president in the US. This is brand new here (and unprecedented).
utemia you didn't watch it through, otherwise you would have see another example. Nothing is evil until it is acted upon.
Unless President Obama ordered the schoolchildren to write a song of that ilk about him it is harmless. Euphoria makes people do funny things like writing songs about issues they feel very strongly about. And evidently they went overboard with it as shown in writing a nursery ryme like song about the sitting president. I agree with you that it sounds very well strange to hear kids sing it.. like children in North Korea or China singing the praise of Mao, but it is not an official sanctioned and ordered Obama propaganda forced upon schools and kindergardens by the government. And that is the big difference, the motivation and organization behind it.
I couldn't see anything overly communist in statements like equality, national pride and standing strong. That are pretty much universal themes.
I find it absurd, but then you have many absurd things in the US. This didn't really surprise me that much and I can't see a threat coming from kindergardeners singing about the first black president.
[quote who="Nitro Cruiser" reply="63" id="2432399"]Hagiographic songs about people are millenia old.Not about a sitting president in the US. This is brand new here (and unprecedented).
True. It still doesn't make it a threat.
I watched it partially. If I had been there I would have seriously questioned what they had been doing because it is dubious to use children in that manner as they clearly are too young to know what they are singing about. It would be no matter if it had been about any other issue, but this song is controversial because of how those kids are instrumentalized for an issue that is too current and that is not OK. It is the same problem with pro life activists that have their children marching in demonstrations or any other political group that uses kids. It is unethical. But the content of the songs is harmless enough even though that is actually beside the point in this issue. It is not about propaganda it is about what you can and what you shouldn't do with children in your care. They could have made a song about why america is great instead, that would have been just as apropriate.
In Germany, teachers are not allowed to openly display their political affiliation in school. A song like that which praises a political figure no matter which would not have been possible here I think.
I am trying to keep those two issues seperate, the propaganda and indoctrination angle and what is ethical as a teacher or Kindergarden lady (what is that jobdiscription in english?) and what isn't.
It sounds like im contradicting myself, when I am really just trying to say that it's not propaganda, that the song itself was harmless and probably not borne out of some government sanctioned program to indoctrinate the youngest generation but that the instrumentalization of children in that way for a political statement by their parents/teachers is unethical nontheless. But not evil.
I'm sure Hitler didn't come up with jingles himself for the German children either. That is what underlings and true believers do, just as the teachers at this US school did.
You must not be familiar with the NEA.
Here's a link and an excerpt:
"In recent decades the NEA has greatly increased its visibility in party politics, endorsing almost exclusively Democratic Party candidates and contributing funds and other assistance to political campaigns. The NEA asserts itself "non-partisan", but critics point out that the NEA has endorsed and provided support for every Democratic Party presidential nominee from Jimmy Carter to Barack Obama and has never endorsed any Republican or third party candidate for the presidency"
Does anyone want a single-minded, partisan, political activist entity teaching their children (besides Democrats)? Does that sound a little closer to NSDAP tactics for you?
The defining difference is that the NSDAP controlled everything. If you weren't a party member or sanctioned by the party, you couldn't publish books, you couldn't be a teacher, professor, run your shop etc. The comparison doesn't hold up because it wasn't a private organization that endorsed a political party, it was the political party that killed the competition, quite literally.
I am not exactly sure how unions work in the US. I skimmed the article, but it sounds like the NEA is a private organization. They endorse candidates and raise funds, but isn't that normal in the US for private organizations of the respective political spectrum to endorse and fund and support political candidates? The republicans have their own organizations that support them. I stumbled across The Family Research Council LINK while doing research once, and I was pretty speechless. I don't know how much influence and/or money they actually have and if they can compare in that respect with the NEA, but evidently such political organizations are quite normal in the US. What you criticise as nazi methods is the general problem when lobbyism marries political activism, and it has not that much to do with NSDAP tactics. But if you insist that it does too - everybody does it in US politics which levels the playing field. You can't criticise one side only, that's the pot calling the kettle black.
Politics should stay out of school. Or rather, political oppinions have to stay out of school. Political activism of any denomination has no place in schools. I agree completely on that principle.
DerKrieger had his precedents:
Benjamin Franklin, in "The Encouragement of Idleness," 1766
Of course, he'd be called a racist for having such opinions were he alive today.
What do you do when there simply aren't enough jobs to go around for everybody? Population growth vs. ongoing computerizing and automating in the production of goods,produce and administrative work also means that nonskilled workers hardly find a job at all anymore. The service industry can't compensate for the loss of jobs in factories or agriculture forever. Unless you proclaim the survival of the fittest which could result in a population decline or make a very restrictive family policy you will have people (those that lost in the battle for jobs) that depend on welfare. This situation isn't here yet, but technical progress could make it a reality sooner rather than later.
And then there is the factor of a steadily growing population of elderly which recieve pensions and less and less people who pay into the fund. The demographic pyrmaid is upside down - it will be very pronounced in a few decades in Germany - and there is no solution in sight. Right now, employees have to pay into the pot but won't get anything out of it when they're in retirement age and everyone is encouraged to privately save money as well. That really sucks, but you can't tell people to hurry up and die already either.
Right now, I don't see either conservatives nor liberals having a solution for these problems.
Service jobs can and have compensated for loss of other jobs. just as factories compensated for the loss of agriculture jobs during the industrial revolution, so service has now done the same. The statist attitude that "we must keep everything the same because that is the way my daddy did it" is a wish by man, but hardly a worthy goal.
As long as a society is prospering, jobs and job seekers will find a happy meeting point. Now you may not be making enough to buy a mercedes, but you sure can buy a VW on it. And as you gain in experience, you will rise in compensation (that is why oldpeople make so much - not because they are greedy).
So what we are looking at is a temporary disequilibrium between jobs and workers. Usually in a time of recession (like now). In those times, people have a safety net - Unemployment Compensation. In its purest form, the UC is funded by a tax on business and so the only role government plays is in holding the money and distributing it (and taking its agent fee). So that is not really a government handout - you earned that as you worked (the tax is based on 2 main factors - the rate of layoffs in your industry and the total payroll of the company).
insisting that we must keep all jobs would mean we would have to retain all manufacturers of Buggy whips, even though there is minimal demand these days. It is something the communists tried (before failing). It never works.
But what about population growth you say? Those extra people do require extra services, so the number of jobs has to increase. More barbers, more hair stylists, chefs, waiters, waitresses, etc. Andbefore slamming all those jobs as "mminimum wage dead end jobs" remember what they really are. They are entry level jobs that are meant to provide work experience to young people so they eventually can get better jobs with more responsibility and experience. Without them, there would be no way to train those people and so the labor pool would eventually retire and die.
capitalism is not perfect. but it is better than anything else tried so far. And it works as long as government allows it to.
I'll have you know that hair stylists complete a 3 year apprenticeship in Germany and have a journeyman's certificate in the end. It's isn't really a minimum wage entry job here - as a matter of fact Germany doesn't have a minimum wage at all. There aren't really many jobs that function as stepping stones because most every job/professions require a certificate, be it builder, carpenter, clerk, shopassistant, cook, hair stylist, etc. The unions negotiate for tariffs in the different sectors, and each industry has its own union. Walmart didn't stay in Germany because of that - they didn't like the strong union at all.
Simply keeping people occupied with redundant work isn't a solution, obviously. And as population grows, more service is needed. But service doesn't produce anything on its own and relies on people with money to buy it . When there are less jobs that require experience and responsibility due to technological progress, don't you have less people that are able to buy service as well? Economic theory gives me a headacher.. I prefer literature studies and other fields of humanities even if they seem actually less productive than the service industry.
The claim that all new jobs are no (or low) experience has been around for many years - and so far have not materialized. Why? For the most part you are correct - people cant afford to make a careere out of them. So they create jobs that did not exist before and make a bundle at them! Cell Phones? No where 30years ago (and technically "servicing" cell phones is a service job, albeit a highly technical one).
But it does require a growing economy. Stagnant or declining economies do not have the money to spend on things they can do themselves (think about it, how many gardeners do you need if you are out of work?).
And I will try to go easy on the econ. It was my major and I do love it. But I am not so egotistical to think everyone does.
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