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Welfare-State Socialism

Friday, March 07, 2014

Narcissism And Gnosticism

Radical left-wing Democrat/Socialists not only are blinded to reality by their narcissism, but also are led into disastrous social and political policies by their gnosticism.

With respect to narcissism, columnist Michael Barone echoes my recent posting.

Read Obama Mistakenly Believes Others See World As He Does

With respect to gnosticism, the other radical left deformation of reality, I outlined the problem in The Liberal Jihad - The Hundred-Year War Against the Constitution:

Eric Voegelin addressed the persistence of gnosticism in Science, Politics & Gnosticism, based on his 1958 University of Heidelberg lecture. He wrote:

“The more we come to know about the gnosis of antiquity, the more it becomes certain that modern movements of thought, such as progressivism, positivism, Hegelianism, and Marxism, are variants of gnosticism… The death of God is the cardinal issue of gnosis, both ancient and modern. From Hegel to Nietzsche it is the great theme of gnostic speculation, and Protestant theology has been plagued by it ever since Hegel’s time. In recent years, it has been taken up by American theologians who are faced with the pressing phenomena of urbanization and alienation.”

Conditions became even worse after 1958. In the 1970s, President Johnson’s socialistic Great Society of welfare entitlements led to student anarchism, anti-Vietnam War hysteria, riots, burning, and looting in cities. Many Christian churches effectively abandoned Christianity. Many urban ministers became supporters of paganism within the walls of their churches, opting for the flower-child spirituality of drugs and sexual promiscuity. Christianity was degraded into a feel-good association in which moral standards were rejected as offensive to people’s sensitivities.

Professor Voegelin continued:

“[In the gnostic world view], The world is no longer the well-ordered, the cosmos in which Hellenic man felt at home; nor is it the Judeo-Christian world that God created and found good. Gnostic man no longer wishes to perceive in admiration the intrinsic order of the cosmos. For him the world has become a prison from which he wants to escape… the aim always is destruction of the old world and passage to the new. The instrument of salvation is gnosis itself— knowledge.”

Foreseeing the effect of American liberalism’s gnosis, Voegelin concluded:

“Self-salvation through knowledge has its own magic, and this magic is not harmless. The structure of the order of being will not change because one finds it defective and runs away from it. The attempt at world destruction will not destroy the world, but will only increase the disorder in society.”

Back to summary...

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 03/07 at 10:39 PM
Foreign Policy • Political Theory • Welfare-State Socialism • (3) Comments
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If The Evidence Doesn’t Support Your Preconception, Hide It

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has downplayed evidence that the global climate is considerably less sensitive to greenhouse gases than climate models are estimating.

Global Warming IS REAL, argues sceptic mathematician - it just isn’t THERMAGEDDON

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 03/07 at 02:33 PM
Junk Science • Welfare-State Socialism • (1) Comments
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Tuesday, March 04, 2014

We Dismissed God And Hired Obama

Obama’s Journey from Arrogance to Incompetence

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 03/04 at 11:42 AM
Foreign Policy • Thought Police & PC • Welfare-State Socialism • (1) Comments
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Sunday, February 23, 2014

Socialist Labor Unions Get What They Deserve

New ObamaCare Losers: Public Employees

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 02/23 at 11:28 AM
Welfare-State Socialism • (1) Comments
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Saturday, February 22, 2014

Minimum-Wage Mistakes

Nelson Mandela’s lesson for Bill de Blasio (and for President Obama).

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 02/22 at 10:18 PM
Economics • Thought Police & PC • Welfare-State Socialism • (0) Comments
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Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Minimum Wage Laws Benefit Special Interests, Not The Poor

Read this analysis from the Mises Daily blog.

Quote:

Virtually everyone who supports higher minimum wages asserts their intent to help working families. But it may frequently be a false compassion whose common denominator is advancing one’s own self-interest while harming working families. That would also explain why so many are unwilling to seriously consider whether such compassion actually works, rather than just sounding good.

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 02/19 at 10:05 PM
Economics • Welfare-State Socialism • (0) Comments
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Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Living On The Dole Or In Debt

Liberal-progressives can take pleasure in the Wall Street Journal’s report today that U.S. household debt posted the largest quarterly increase since before the recession. This while the country remains adrift in the doldrums of the worst economic “recovery” since the liberal-progressive Great Depression of the 1930s.

Given the liberal-progressive apotheosis of self-indulgence and immoral hedonism, it’s not surprising. The Federal Reserve has been lavishing fiat money on the stock market, aiming to create a “wealth effect” that will induce people to resume their profligate use of debt that created the housing bubble and implosion of the banking system in 2007-2008.

Rising household debt represents continuation of the long-term trend away from the ethos of hard work and savings for a better future, a trend that gladdens the hearts of liberal-progressive-socialists whose religious catechism includes Keynesian economic doctrine. Our educational system, from grade school to college, has for more than five decades inculcated the unconstitutionally established national religion of socialism: the belief that saving causes recessions, that capitalism is no more than greed and anti-social competitiveness, that only the collectivized, all-powerful national political state can dispense social justice.

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 02/18 at 08:25 PM
Economics • Tradition & Morality • Welfare-State Socialism • (5) Comments
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Monday, February 17, 2014

Is The Constitution No More Than Whatever Public Opinion Will Tolerate?

Liberal-progressive legal theorists have in recent decades touted the conception that the delegates who wrote the Constitution in 1787 didn’t really mean to make amending the Constitution so difficult. Evolving public opinion does the job without formal amendments.