Socialists, which includes all of Western Europe and nearly half of the United States, sincerely believe that redistributing private property will magically transform human nature, end poverty, and bring peace, tranquility, and prosperity to Africa. In the real world this is dangerous and wasteful sentimentality.
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The media were dazzled by the UK’s Glastonbury Festival and the Gleneagles Scottish version of our 1960s Woodstock concert. Those outpourings of emotion are likely to have exactly the same result: perpetuation of fuzzy sentimentality among the world’s youth and the Baby Boomers who have never yet grown up.
Robert Frederick Xenon “Bob” Geldof, a 54-year old Irish singer who is old enough to have acquired some common sense, this week displayed the tunnel vision (less kindly, ignorance) that characterizes people unfortunate to have been seduced by socialism.
BBC News reported:
“Geldof rallies Glastonbury crowd
Bob Geldof has addressed crowds at the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, urging tens of thousands of fans to “make poverty history"."
The Scotsman reported enthusiastically:
“BOB Geldof and a star-studded cast of musicians and performers last night urged world leaders gathering in Gleneagles to end global poverty, as they staged a huge Live 8 concert at Murrayfield Stadium in Edinburgh.
In front of 60,000 people, Geldof , who held up a football shirt with his name on the back which had been given to him by members of Renfrewshire United, said: “We’re all here. We finally got here, the gathering of the clans, from all over the world, from all over Scotland, from all over the UK. We told them we’d come. We came.”
“....Bono, who later performed a duet with Andrea Corr from the Corrs, added: “I gave them your permission to spend your money ending extreme poverty in our lifetime.”
“....The actor George Clooney then appeared on stage and introduced Scots singer Annie Lennox, who received one of the biggest cheers of the night as she performed Redemption Song by Bob Marley and Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves.
In a stirring speech, she said it was “intolerable that millions of people are condemned to barely survive in abject hardship and grinding poverty with no food in their bellies”.
MTV.com reports:
“It remains to be seen if the G8 leaders gathered in Scotland heard the message of Saturday’s Live 8 concerts, but one thing’s for sure: Organizer Bob Geldof is getting serious props.
“The disheveled rocker has been nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of debt relief and financial aid to Africa. Norwegian parliamentarian Jan Simonsen made the nomination on Wednesday (July 6), according to a BBC News report, singling out Geldof’s tireless efforts to help the world’s poorest nations.”
Socialist political leaders have joined the admiring throng, according to Expatica, the news service for German expatriates:
“EDINBURGH - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will be meeting leading anti-poverty activists and rock stars Bob Geldof and Bono ahead of the G8 meeting of leading industrial nations which opens later Wednesday.”
To stay on the rock-concert theme, the milling throng and their European socialist leaders ought to ponder the words of another Baby Boomer song, Pete Seeger’s and Joe Hickerson’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"paying special attention to the refrain, “When will they ever learn?”
It’s ironic that Irish singer Bob Geldof is unable to comprehend that his native land has become one of Europe’s most successful economies by pursuing the exact opposite of the policy of socialistic redistribution that Mr. Geldof is urging upon the G8. See Eminent Domain: More Thoughts for New York Times opinion columnist Thomas L. Friedman’s description.
The sad thing is that so many millions of young people have been made ignorant of the real world by their socialist educators. They know so little of history and understand so little of economic matters that they have accepted unquestioningly the socialist proposition that equal distribution of property will transform human nature, ending wars, crime, and poverty. Reviewing the facts of African politics since the 1950s would be a shocking, ice-cold bath for them. The post-world War II “winds of change” handed mostly well run colonial states over to indigenous, socialistically trained leaders who proved to be little more than armed thugs, intent upon looting and murdering their own people.
As WashingtonTimes editor and columnist Wesley Pruden writes in his July 5th article “Slaking a thirst with a fire hose:”
“Tony Blair’s No. 2 man, George Brown, talks giddily of a Marshall Plan for Africa, but Nigerian despots alone have already pocketed the equivalent of six Marshall Plans. George C. Marshall’s miracle scheme for rebuilding Europe worked because mature European leadership was determined to rescue the continent from the ravages of World War II. There’s scant evidence that Africa’s “leaders” want anything more than to drink from the fire hose.”
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