The View From 1776

§ American Traditions

The Unwritten Constitution

§ People and Ideas

Data Bank

§ Decline of Western Civilization: a Snapshot

Historical Time-line

§ Books to Read

Recommended List

§ BUY MY BOOK

Friday, July 27, 2012

Doing The Pundit Pounce

Liberal-progressive talk show hosts are jumping all over Mitt Romney’s purported lack of understanding of the historical special relationship between the United States and Great Britain. This because Romney stated his concern that the security firm hired to protect London during the Olympics had not yet employed a sufficient number of guards.

These pundits wish, at the same time, to overlook Obama’s dumping all over that relationship, as Charles Krauthammer notes:

Quote:

On the contrary. Obama started his presidency by returning to the British Embassy the bust of Winston Churchill that had graced the Oval Office. Then came the State Department official who denied the very existence of a U.S.-British special relationship, saying: “There’s nothing special about Britain. You’re just the same as the other 190 countries in the world.”

To be topped off by the slap they received over the Falkland Islands, an issue the Brits had considered closed since they repelled the Argentine invasion there 30 years ago. They were not amused by the Obama administration’s studied neutrality between Britain and Argentina, with both a State Department spokesman and the president ostentatiously employing “Malvinas,” the politically charged Argentine name, interchangeably with “Falklands.” (Although the president flubbed it, calling them the “Maldives,” an Indian Ocean island chain 8,000 miles away.)

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 07/27 at 12:26 AM
Foreign Policy • (4) Comments
Print this Article • Email A Friend • Permalink

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Mr. Bubbles

The stock market clamors for yet more quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve, a techie way of describing flooding the financial markets with fiat money created out of thin air. This does nothing for the overall economy, but it further inflates the stock market speculative bubble.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Pagan Religion vs. Science

Liberal-progressive social engineering shibboleths are “sound good” and “feel good” aspects of the secular religion of socialism. But they are far from congruent with scientific, analytic truth.

Questioning the Messianic Conception of Smart Growth

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 07/16 at 05:14 PM
Junk Science • (0) Comments
Print this Article • Email A Friend • Permalink

Throwing Money To The Winds

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 07/16 at 05:05 PM
Junk Science • (0) Comments
Print this Article • Email A Friend • Permalink

It’s Hard To Be All Wrong All The Time

But liberal-progressives are giving it a good try.

Environmental Alarmism, Then and Now

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 07/16 at 04:36 PM
Junk Science • (0) Comments
Print this Article • Email A Friend • Permalink

A Middle-Of-The-Road View On Both Candidates

Despite his affiliation with the usually far-left Washington Post, columnist Robert J. Samuelson tends to be more balanced in his views. Read Character assassination on the campaign trail.

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 07/16 at 12:35 PM
Political Theory • (0) Comments
Print this Article • Email A Friend • Permalink

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Why Bernanke Can’t Force Banks To Lend

Read Mike Shedlock’s analysis.

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 07/15 at 03:45 PM
Economics • (0) Comments
Print this Article • Email A Friend • Permalink

More Thoughts About Obama’s Industrial Pretensions

Clearly another aim of Obama’s socialistic industrial policies is the possibility they open for strengthening the boa constrictor role of labor unions, which are quintessentially socialistic and by nature supportive of the Democrat/Socialist Party.

To the extent that Obama can use government deficit spending and regulatory control to rejuvenate industrial unions, he strengthens his voter appeal in Rust Belt states of the upper Midwest. At the same time, he can lever industrial unions into commanding positions in Republican strongholds in the Southeast and Southwest.

The latter will blunt the appeal of Red States’ efficient and lower-cost labor and reduce the incentive for European or Asiatic manufacturers to locate there. Of course, that will implant the same deadly regulatory and union harnesses there, to the detriment of the entire nation’s economic growth and wellbeing. In turn, that will work to reduce the vestigial ethos of personal responsibility and to corral the entire nation in the stock pens of socialism.

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 07/15 at 02:57 PM
Welfare-State Socialism • (0) Comments
Print this Article • Email A Friend • Permalink

Obama Impersonates Wizard Of Oz

The One, with his messianic personal compulsions, is now promising to revive American manufacturing, while damning American businessmen and bankers as greedy criminals who stand in the way of right and good (defined as his re-election).

Liberal-progressive-socialists have always held the belief that only social engineers and bureaucratic administrators are capable of running businesses efficiently and, most importantly, in congruence with the social justice demands of socialism. The implication is that only government is capable of improving people’s lives, as President Clinton’s press secretary Dee Dee Myers stated it.

Against that background it’s clear that Obama is thoroughly marinated in the secular religion of socialism. Unfortunately for our nation, the same can be said regarding far too many others, Republicans as well as Democrat/Socialists.

Against this assertion one can ask, first of all, how Great Britain and then the United States became the greatest manufacturing powers on earth, long before the advent of socialist interventions in private economic activity. One must note that certain industries in both countries gained protection from foreign competition through legislative enactment of tariffs. Tariffs, however, are a far cry from Obama’s direct government involvement with individual “green” energy companies, his take-over of General Motors and Chrysler, as well as the banking business, and his intentions to take over and revitalize abandoned factories.

For background details about Obama/Oz’s pretensions, read a left-leaning assessment published in one of the nation’s iconic liberal-progressive newspapers, The Washington Post.

Can Obama Finally Fix American Manufacturing?

Among other ideas touched upon in the WaPo article is the suggestion that Germany, with its heavily regulated industries and powerful labor unions, is a model for the United States to follow. From Obama’s view point, that makes sense, because Germany, since the days of Ferdinand Lasalle in the 1860s, has been in the forefront of European socialism.

We should note, however, that a hallmark of the German economy has been the close managerial control relationship between the great German banks and German industry. Those banks have large holdings of industrial companies’ securities, as well as seats on company boards of directors, that makes for an even greater degree of crony capitalism than here in the United States. Most attractively from Obama’s viewpoint, that consolidation of industrial control made it very easy for Hitler to impose dictatorial government control of German industry and to re-orient it to illegal re-armament production for World War II.

As always, liberal-progressive-socialism is oriented toward tyranny. Obama’s policies and ideological pretensions are the most blatant irruption thereof since Franklin Roosevelt’s imposition of socialism in the 1930s New Deal.

Back to summary...

Posted by Thomas E. Brewton on 07/15 at 01:31 PM
Welfare-State Socialism • (2) Comments
Print this Article • Email A Friend • Permalink