Maggie's Farm

No one is allowed to say what they mean or mean what they say these days. Marshall McLuhan's point: "The medium is the message" is now writ large in that no one believes any of it.


Right on Phoenix ... if you say what you mean to say and it isn't in the current cultural codex you're in BIG trouble. Especially if you have a job ..being retired does have a liberating quality.

Hayek wrote "The Road to Serfdom" in Britain in 1944. And boy was he unpopular, since Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were in love with Stalin, and since the 1920 Marxist-Leninisms had become all the rage in the US. Let me say at the outset that no review of "The Road to Serfdom can replace it's reading. F.A Hayek is now considered a giant and this book as influential in understanding the world as any ever written. I say without equivocation that one cannot understand the world of the last 150 years without understanding this book.

Hayek's thesis was that central economic planning will inevitably lead to governmental control of every facet of its citizen's life, and hence toward a totalitarian state. Hayek's other insightful observations: Nazism, Fascism and communism all have the same roots. In a totalitarian state, it is always the ruthless and the unsophisticated who ascend to the top. Extensive governmental control harms the society not just in delivering dismal economic results, but, more seriously, it produces a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people.

In this now famous book, Hayek breaks down the different ways in which state planning, as opposed to individual or more localized control, nearly always means the loss of liberty. Ultimately, in an economic system planned from the top down, should the system seek to continue, it will require dreadful, totalitarian measures. One of the saddest facts of these systems though is that in order to be put into place, they require many once-free people to willingly give up their freedoms: "the totalitarians in our midst" Hayek labels them. One passage along this line that holds just as true today as when Hayek wrote it:

"And, undoubtedly, not merely the ideas which in Germany and elsewhere prepared totalitarianism but also many of the principles of totalitarianism itself are what exercises an increasing fascination in many other countries. Although few people, if anybody, in England would probably be ready to swallow totalitarianism whole, there are few single features which have not yet been advised by somebody or other. Indeed, there is scarcely a leaf out of Hitler's book which somebody or other in England or America has not recommended us to take and use for our own purposes. This applies particularly to many people who are undoubtedly Hitler's mortal enemies because of one special feature in his system. We should never forget the anti-Semitism of Hitler has driven from his country, or turned into his enemies, many people who in every respect are confirmed totalitarians of the German type."

For anyone who has wondered recently why Pat Buchanan can often be seen receiving large applause at rallies with ultra-Leftist labor union leaders, or how other fringe Right groups often march these days against international free trade along side of socialist/environmentalist groups, F.A. Hayek explained it perfectly nearly 60 years ago. Whether seeking to force a large group of people to pay excessive amounts for goods and services, through trade protectionism supposedly planned to "protect" the jobs of a much smaller group, or through more directly stated taxation and redistribution of wealth programs, these groups are both taking a page from the Russian and German totalitarians of the 20th Century. Often "mortal enemies" of each other, they have found common cause at the modern-day economic forums, and should a free American people ultimately hand them control, as the Germans gave to these groups' National Socialist forebears, then similar results would ultimately not be far behind. (And if you think there weren't numerous leftists in strong roles in Hitler's National Socialist party, you need to read this book that much more.)

States rights today are all but reduced to a vestigial impotence instead of being the vibrate "laboratories" they were intended to be in perfecting our union. The central state is all...right down to the Kelo decision. I recommend reading the book or simply going into retirement if your close enough since I see it as Julius Caesar did January 10, 49 BC...."Alea iacta est" *

*some section stolen from various articles and college notes of 40 years vintage.

P.S. In more quaint days it was called "creeping socialism"...todays Democratic Party actively practice it, and to an almost equal extent in practice ,if not acknowledged in speeches the Republican Party too.

At least the Democratic Party adopted "Progressive" as
their big government, nanny state, code word.

The Republicans, being the "Dumb Party" still mouth the platitudes of less government while working for a New World Order.

BD,
George Washington acknowledged on many ocasions the impact and importance of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense".
I read occasionally and try to imagine the times..it is moving. Maggies Farm, a direct link to the Thomas Paines', H.L. Menchens, and yes even Algores are vital to our freedom.
This venue and six or seven clips of 7.62 Full Metal Jacket and we'll do just fine.

here are some leftover words from my last post..plug them in where you feel they might be appropriate

"it"
"right of freedom of the press"
"occasions"

Also some spare grammar thingys.... , ( ) ? ; :

Phoenix,
Gen. U.S. Grant in his memories said that he regretted one battle he fought, or rather one last charge made. It was at Cold Harbor ,Va where in the initial charge he has lost 7,000 men in 30 minutes. That was in an era where ramrods were used to load the rifles.
It was also the first time in the war where Robert E Lee faced U.S. Grant. It was a battle fought late in the war, had little value but proved a killing ground for many brave blue and grey men.

I have said it many times but we are a nation that fights for the rights of man and freedom for all. We have graves full of men we can not, and must not made a mockery of when the evil we face is so well defined. It is not just the lives of those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan but all those whose cause was just and freedom thier aim.