I am afraid I started (or added fuel to the fire of) a flame war in the comments on this post over at Waking Up On Planet X. My comments there might get me barred from commenting on Candace's site. However, I think that what I said needs to be said. In the interests of diverting a flame war from her comments section, I have copied the relevant exchange here. If there is to be a flame war over this, then let it occur here.
Balbulican: Oh, crap. Do you actually believe that? That there's something inherent in "left wingers" that makes us more "grossly unfair to those of us who don't happen to share their views?" That's it's not simply a question of perspective?
Seriously?
Candace: Yes, I seriously believe it. Look at the coverage of Brison's remarks, which were a DIRECT personal slur on the Leader of the CPoC, accusing him of illegal lobbying, hiding election funding (implying something scary & nasty & possibly illegal) - a couple of comments saying it was out of line and that's about it.
Compared to "organized crime" which, when you're talking about Gagliano & his reported connections alone is not necessarily off the mark. Cash in paper bags. Money laundering. wtf is that if NOT organized crime? It's just not attached to a "family" but to a political party. I think Craig Oliver is going to CRY if Harper doesn't apologize.
So yes, I DO believe that.
Balbulican: So, Candace...given that you believe that Stageleft, and Treehugger, and I...as "leftists"...are "grossly unfair to those of us who don't happen to share their views"...
How do you suppose we got to be that way?
Is it that we're all just stupider than you? Or somehow, congenitally more "unfair"? Do you think our gross "unfairness" is a moral flaw that we poor, inferior lefties share, or an intellectual one?
Ed: Yes Balb. If you are a leftist then you are either stupid or evil. Take your pick.
If you are stupid, then I can forgive you.
If you are not stupid however, then I cannot forgive you for: embracing the political philosophy that directly led to one hundred million violent deaths in the 20th century; seeking to punish the productive for the sake of rewarding the lazy; your willful ignorance of economics; and hence, your hatred of the human race.
Candace: Ed, that's pretty harsh. Just as those of us on the right don't appreciate getting lumped in with the raving right wingnuts that would see women back in the kitchen, barefoot & pregnant, leaving the "important" work to the men, it's inappropriate to lump everyone on the left side of the spectrum as unprincipled or incapable of intelligent thought.
Balb's comment was in response to MY response to a question he asked that I misread (which should be clear to anyone reading the whole thread).
Either I'm misreading your remarks as serious instead of sarcastic, or you need to edit them or apologize.
I'm trying to keep the conversations here at a level of civility Ed. If you want a flaming war, there are lots of sites for those.
Canadian politics didn't get to the sorry state that they are in from intelligent debate between those of differing opinions. Name calling and insults don't accomplish much, other than hurt feelings and emotional and intellectual walls.
I guess I'm stating the old adage - if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
So... You've got until 9:00 am MST to make a decision. Otherwise I'll delete your comment and give serious consideration to banning you from further comments.
Balbulican: Wow, Ed. That sure is laying it on the line. But thanks for the diagnosis.
Now the only thing I have to figure out is the stupid/evil ratio. I can't be PURELY stupid (I can form coherent sentences), but I can't be PURELY evil either (lots of volunteer work, adoption of kids and whatnot)...so it must be a mix. Any hints on how I can figure out how much of me is which?
Just for clarification...would that diagnosis...stupid or evil...apply to EVERYONE who supported, let's say, the Liberals or the NDP?
Ed: You're right Candace, that was harsh. And yes, the either/or proposition is inaccurate.
Balbulican, I offer you two further options besides stupid and evil: misinformed or gullible. And yes, those who promote any leftist economic philosophy fall into one of those four categories or a combination thereof.
Candace, it's your sandbox, and you make the rules here. It may have been out of line for me to answer Balb's question to you, and my position definitely came across as harsh. I pounced upon Balbulican's reference to a "moral flaw" and extended it well beyond the parameters of the previous discussion.
However, I am tired of seeing the leftist economic position defended as something noble. It is not. The notion of "from each according to ability to each according to his need" is an endorsement of slavery.
I can understand the desire to compromise, to arrive at a consensus without hurt feelings. Compromise is not always possible or healthy though. When there is a choice between food and poison, is it wise to compromise?
It is long past time that the leftist economic philosophy was held up to the light and examined for what it really is: the poison that is slowly killing Canada. It is killing Canada in the form of transfer payments from the economically productive regions of the country to those regions that refuse to be productive. It is killing Canada in the form of socialized medicine, which inflates bureaucracy at the expense of patient diagnosis and treatment. It is killing Canada in the form of the Kyoto protocol, which is a thinly-disguised gutting of capitalist economies to prop up socialist economies. It is killing Canada politically as "pull" replaces merit, and as graft and corruption inevitably follow.
If that gets me barred from commenting on your blog, then so be it, and to my regret. I have no desire to lower the level of discourse on your blog, and I apologize for having done so. I understand your desire to avoid a flame war, but on some issues I simply cannot remain silent. Therefore, I am copying this exchange to my own blog. If a flame war is the result of my comments, then that flame war can occur on my blog instead of yours.
OK, so there you have it. Am I being unfair to those on the left side of the economic spectrum? Or am I telling it like it is?
Technorati Tags: Politics, Socialism
15 comments:
Well, if you're asking me for my opinion, I think you're being unfair, obviously. Every single political philosophies from the dawn of time has blood on its hands thanks to extremists who take the philosophy too far. And just as it is dishonest to tie the right wing of this nation to the atrocities of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, it's equally dishonest to tie the left wing to the atrocities of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.
The New Democrats, the Liberals and the Conservatives have far more in common with each other than they do with the evil men in history. They are all trying to do the best they can for themselves, their friends, neighbours and their country. The average voter who votes in these ways, who advocates for these positions are as honest and hardworking as the next guy, and they don't deserve to be sullied in such a fashion.
The only thing that leads to evil is dogmaticism; a belief that your side holds all of the good in the world, and the other side is populated with people who are either stupid, evil, misinformed or gullable. The truth, in reality, lies not in ourselves, but somewhere between all of us. We each hold a piece of it, and as long as we maintain that fundamental respect for each other as human beings (albeit ones we politically disagree with), we are in no danger of falling down the path that takes us to religious or political extremes.
James, of course I'm askng for your opinion; for the opinion of anyone who reads this blog in fact.
You buried the needle on my irony meter when you said "the only thing that leads to evil is dogmaticism".
As for all the major political parties having much in common: to that I must regretfully agree. The Conservatives themselves are far too left wing. The average Canadian nowadays is so far to the left that he views a centrist policy as "extreme right wing", which is just sad.
I do not believe that I am sullying those people on the economic left. The left wing economic position is evil, plain and simple. It is the endorsement of slavery - the slavery of the productive to their masters, the unproductive. It rewards laziness by punishing hard work. It imposes penalties upon those who a do that which is necessary to improve human life, to reward those that do not.
Those who advocate that position are either doing so with the full knowledge of the implications (and are therefore evil themselves) or they are doing so with incomplete- or no- knowledge of the implications (in which case they are gullible, misinformed, or stupid).
Those on the economic right realize that wealth and value are not intrinsic properties. Value and wealth are created by human beings, who create these things by wilfull action: grain does not harvest itself, oil does not drill itself, cars do not produce themselves. These things are produced by human beings performing valuable work.
Those on the left believe that all wealth is stolen. They believe that in order for one person to gain wealth, he must steal that wealth from another person. They deny the creation of value by human hands, and view economics as a zero-sum game.
Of course, economics is only a zero-sum game if nobody works. If one believes that he works hard and yet still holds a leftist economic position, then he is denying the value of his own work, and denying the value of the work of others. Such a position denies that which makes human life possible, and is therefore a hatred of humanity itself. And that's evil.
I am not denying the value of my own work by accepting that taxes and social programs are the price we pay for a stable and prosperous (and ultimately free) society. What I am acknowledging is that not everybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and that those who can't make ends meet, either through bad luck or other people's bad decisions, are not worthless, or unworthy of help.
Ultimately, those that work hard and who are rich benefit by making sure that those who are poor don't become desperately poor. It is those individuals who end up buying a lot of the goods and services that make the rich, rich.
And you are operating on a false premise if you argue that everybody on the left believes that all wealth is stolen. That's simply not true. Plenty of people who advocate government spending are simply acknowledging that the free market -- the single greatest generator of wealth in the history of human civilization -- is not without its flaws. The capitalist system, while better than any of the alternatives, still favours short term, unsustainable gains over long term, sustainable ones. It tends towards monopolies. It breaks down (as anyone who lived through the Great Depression will tell you).
To keep the free market chugging along at a reasonable clip, I believe we have to ensure that some of its excesses have to be curtailed. Investments which aren't efficiently provided by the market (power, roads and, today, rural broadband) are better provided by governments, or at least public-private partnerships. Investments such as education create a marketplace of workers better able to create better wealth for themselves. Investments such as roads and rail ensure that businesses are better able to spread their goods far and wide and accrue more wealth.
There is nothing evil in this.
Absolutism is the true evil, here. A believe that there is a black and white world when, short of God in heaven, nothing here on Earth is perfect, nor can it ever be. When political dogmatics on the left and the right abandon pragmatism, things start to fall apart.
Well, Robot, let's put your world view about evil, leftists, and my beliefs about work, value, profit, and "stolen" wealth to the test, shall we? I really am quite sick of know-nothing, self professed amateur political scientists explaining my values and beliefs to me... especially when they contemptuously pronounce me "evil or stupid" in the process.
Let's appoint a neutral judge, someone we both trust to be discrete and honest. I'd nominate Candace, but feel free to propose someone different.
Then we'll both send her a little bit of documentation. I'd suggest a personal statement of net worth and and a third party assessment of the value of businesses that we both own, with a payroll list of the people that you and I directly employ, right now. Remove the individual names to protect confidentiality: we'll just let her compare how many jobs and what level of activity you and I are each maintaining in and contributing to the economy.
The next one would be a bit harder, but I'd like to get a sense of how many jobs you have created over the course of your career. I can provide a CV and a pretty defensible estimate of the number of positions I've been responsible for both adding to and training in different organizations over the last thirty years. I'd be be interested in seeing how many jobs you've created.
Then let's both include copies of our income tax receipts for charitable contributions for 2004.
If Candace is acceptable to you and agrees, then please confirm here. Otherwise, please suggest another analyst.
Balbulican, I have created one job. The one I have now.
So, are you telling me that you are actually a right-winger pretending to be left wing? Your comment above suggests that is the case.
Perhaps you are confused. The political compass test may be of some use to you.
James: in aggregate, short term gains add up to long term gains. Blaming the Great Depression on capitalism is disingenuous at best and blatantly dishonest at worst. The primary cause of the Great Depression was abysmally poor monetary policy followed by the United States Federal Reserve, which artificially contracted the monetary supply. It was governmental meddling in the economy that caused the Great Depression, not capitalism.
As for investments which are not efficiently provided by the market, perhaps those investments should not be provided at all. Taking rural broadband as an example: part of the tradeoff of living in the country is the acceptance of a lower level of amenities. Artificially skewing the market so that those amenities are provided has repercussions beyond the immediate interference. I'm thinking that this needs to be a blogpost of its own.
"So, are you telling me that you are actually a right-winger pretending to be left wing? Your comment above suggests that is the case."
No. I'm telling you that you have an interpretation of "leftists" that is cretinous.
Define the term, then tell me how, on the basis of what I said in the thread that started all this, you had the nerve to make assumptions about my values and call me "evil or stupid".
Ok, Balbulican.
Leftist economic ideology holds that popular collectives should control the means of production, that collectivism should win over individualism, and that there should be no private property, only public property. Leftist philosophy favours a centrally-planned economy. It amounts to an endorsement of the slavery of productive people to their "masters", the unproductive.
What you said in the original discussion that triggered my response was: "Is it that we're all just stupider than you? Or somehow, congenitally more "unfair"? Do you think our gross "unfairness" is a moral flaw that we poor, inferior lefties share, or an intellectual one?"
To which I agreed: adhering to leftist ideology is either a moral or intellectual flaw. Note that I amended my initial response to give two further options besides "evil" and "stupid". I also offered "misinformed" and "gullible".
How is my view of leftists "cretinous"? I view the leftist ideology as an endorsement of slavery. To not oppose that would be cretinous. To adhere to that philosophy, while knowing that it means an endorsement of slavery, is evil.
Ed,
You're correct, socialism is evil. They support an economic system that is based on theft (from the productive class ie. the "evil rich") in order to give it to less productive citizens (ie. "the disenfranchized", "the poor", "the powerless", etc.). It doesn't matter if I steal money or property in order to give it to someone else, it's still theft.
In addition, socialism denies us our most fundamental human right, the right to do as we please with our property and ourselves. Instead, they seek to use central planners to control our wealth for "the greater good" and destroy our individuality by forcing us to sacrifice for the sake of the "community" and "equality".
"The primary cause of the Great Depression was abysmally poor monetary policy followed by the United States Federal Reserve, which artificially contracted the monetary supply. It was governmental meddling in the economy that caused the Great Depression, not capitalism."
This is not true. The bulk of the governmental "meddling" in the economy emerged following the economic collapse. It was what was required to get capitalism back on its feet again. Thanks to our social safety net, economic panics which had been common throughout the nineteenth century are now but a memory today.
We already have an excellent model of the unfettered capitalist system: the early days of the industrial revolution. Thanks to the technological leap forward, we were given an incredible infusion of wealth, but because of capitalism's blind preference of larger, short-term unsustainable gains over smaller long-term sustainable gains, the industrialized world also saw incredible suffering. Cholera killed thousands in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. Tuberculosis and black lung also contributed to the poor's suffering.
It is only through such innovations as sewerage systems, pollution controls, the simple common sense ideal of not placing housing right beneath smokestacks, which led to modern urban planning, that the industrial revolution's gains were solidified, with a society wherein the rich got rich, but the poor didn't suffer so much.
Capitalism didn't do this. It required government intervention in order to protect the lot of the poor from the excesses of the system. In the end, it protected the capitalist system by giving the poor a good enough life that most of them didn't turn to Communism -- a political thought that emerged during this period.
To the assertion that all leftist philosophy is evil, I caution against mistaking compassion for an abhorrance of wealth. I am speaking to this as a Christian, and I could just as easily argue that your argument could produce a society where people would starve, and a failure to feed a starving man is evil.
This is only tempered by the pragmatic reality that, unfortunately, we can't save everybody.
If you want to talk about good and evil, then we bring in a number of religious philosophies into the game. If we ignore our neighbours' suffering, we contribute to it. Christianity requires us to care for our poor and dispossessed, to be our brother's keeper.
As Christ himself said, it is easier for a rich man to travel through the eye of a needle than it is for him to get into heaven -- although this is again tempered by the Biblical quote that it is the _love_ of money, NOT money itself, that is the root of all evil.
But if we take these equally staunch and divergent views -- both of which have considerable religious and political backing in their composition, then we're never going to see eye to eye. I have to call you evil, even though I know you are not. And I think if you knew me, you would know that I'm not evil either.
I support government social programs through taxes because they benefit everybody. They give us the tools we need to make ourselves wealthy; they protect us against bad twists of fate. You yourself have benefitted from these programs. The people who created your job, who make your job profitable, all have made use of this infrastructure. The money you make wouldn't be so readily available if we didn't have the ability to spend it.
James...are you under the impression that there is some kind of transfer of information occurring here?
Robot...with astonishing self knowledge, you've chosen a very apt sobriquet for yourself. You've mastered some 1950-era cliches, and you're managing to process the real world through them. A weak and foolish approach, but it seems to work for you.
Unfortunately the real world doesn't have very much to do with the simplistic little constructs you seem to use to navigate through experience. You may be very young, very inexperienced, or simply very stupid...I can't really tell.
I do, however, know you're a bore, arrogant, and an idea-free waste of time.
From your non-response to my challenge, I'm pretty sure I contribute more to the economy, in terms of real investment, training, jobs, and capacity building, than you do. So in future spare us your smug sermons...when you actually start adding to the economy you can starting judging those who are already paying for the infrastructure that keeps you smug and preaching to people who know a bit more than you about the real world.
Have a nice day, eh?
Balbulican:
Of course there is a transfer of information occurring here. In your attempt to establish your bona fides, you illustrate that you are in fact a capitalist. And yet, in the comments at Candace's site which I copied here, you identify yourself as a leftist.
How is it that I did not respond to your challenge? I told you, I created one job: my own. As for the rest, do you seek to convince yourself that your capitalist achievements somehow prove socialism to be correct?
You have a serious disconnect between your perception of yourself and the reality of your life. If you are creating jobs and contributing to the economy, then you are on the right side of the economic spectrum, not the left. Check your premises.
Ed; You're absolutely correct with your assertions. All of them.
James: Cute bible quotes. You missed the one about the lord helping those who help themselves though. Oh, you missed the one about "teaching a man to fish" as well. Your philosophy does not require folks to help themselves and only "feeds them for a day". That being the case, you're doing it willfully (which makes you evil) or are doing it out of ignorance of the results of your actions (which makes you just plain dumb) I'm betting on evil because you seem to be beyond simple ignorance.
Baub: Isn't it interesting how you propogate / confirm moonbat steriotypes by resorting to derrogatory comments in place of a decent argument. Well done!
Ed: Don't sweat it about Candice too much. She whines alot but it's good humor
Richard, to be fair, this whole flamewar started when I stated that leftists were eiher evil or stupid, which is namecalling. I happen to believe that it is true, but it is namecalling nonetheless
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