In politics, intellectual candle power (brains) has no direct relation to reality. Some of the brainiest people who ever lived were (and are) flaming idiot leftists.
Some, but not all.
A natural sentimentality once inclined me toward leftist thinking. That got checked at age 15, when I read what Einstein said about his famous theory: “If it doesn’t match reality [I think he said ‘experiment’], it’s wrong.”
That hit me square between the eyes. I’d been thinking you stuck by what “felt right,” no matter what. Trust your instincts, trust yourself, if it feels good it’s right, loyalty, never give up, never give in. Like that.
An uncle once confided that his mom (my gramma) was fiercely protective. ”If told one of her boys was guilty of a heinous crime, she would never believe it. But if she had to believe it, she’d know there was a good reason.” That kind of thinking can go down dark, dark roads. Fact is, you can love someone you don’t much like, or whom you don’t like at all. That’s the way of some people in some families.
It’s also the way of socialism. You can love the idea, but you must be wedded, always, to reality. Reality, not wishful thinking, must guide your actions. There are no good reasons for bad or destructive actions.
This is why it matters to know that socialism always fails, always ratchets up to tyranny that delivers stacks of bodies, murderous famines, dreary lives. It fails not for lack of the right people in charge, but because socialism is just a bad idea. It’s meant for families, not for societies. Its sentimental beauty doesn’t matter. The bodies do. The famines do. The dreary lives do. They are reality.
Knowing that history, we cannot yield to it.
Today’s left is wedded to the idea that black people in America have no chance to live normal, fun, rewarding, successful lives. This idea is so compelling to them that the thought expressed in the Netflix movie American Son, that blacks can’t have the American Dream, leaves them anguished. Yet blacks in the millions live the American Dream every day, the Horatio Alger story of a poor kid from nowhere making a good life.
It happens routinely in America. Not the exception. The rule.
Sadly, the failures of socialism often, if not usually, lead people to make excuses for it. The excuses turn to pretense that the negative things aren’t real. Then to lies about how wonderful things really are. That happened in the thirties about Stalin’s Russia, in the forties about Hitler’s Germany, in the fifties about Mao’s China, in the sixties about Castro’s Cuba, in the seventies about Sandinista Nicaragua. It got turned back for a while, during and after Reagan, but it’s happening all over again today about Maduro’s Venezuela, etc., etc.
That’s where socialism unfailingly leads. Denials, pretenses, lies. Bodies, famines, dreariness.
People who are naturally leftists can wean themselves away from pretense and lies with practice in looking at what’s actually going on. But they have to accept that the ultimate arbiter is reality, not some theory or notion that starts out, “If everyone would just…” Today’s left in America burns and bombs and kills. It was the same in the sixties, when I began thinking about all this. Burning and bombing and killing aren’t part of any dream I ever had about social justice.
Perhaps curiously, America as founded was.
In politics, intellectual candle power (brains) has no direct relation to reality. Some of the brainiest people who ever lived were (and are) flaming idiot leftists.
Some, but not all.
A natural sentimentality once inclined me toward leftist thinking. That got checked at age 15, when I read what Einstein said about his famous theory: “If it doesn’t match reality [I think he said ‘experiment’], it’s wrong.”
That hit me square between the eyes. I’d been thinking you stuck by what “felt right,” no matter what. Trust your instincts, trust yourself, if it feels good it’s right, loyalty, never give up, never give in. Like that.
An uncle once confided that his mom (my gramma) was fiercely protective. ”If told one of her boys was guilty of a heinous crime, she would never believe it. But if she had to believe it, she’d know there was a good reason.” That kind of thinking can go down dark, dark roads. Fact is, you can love someone you don’t much like, or whom you don’t like at all. That’s the way of some people in some families.
It’s also the way of socialism. You can love the idea, but you must be wedded, always, to reality. Reality, not wishful thinking, must guide your actions. There are no good reasons for bad or destructive actions.
This is why it matters to know that socialism always fails, always ratchets up to tyranny that delivers stacks of bodies, murderous famines, dreary lives. It fails not for lack of the right people in charge, but because socialism is just a bad idea. It’s meant for families, not for societies. Its sentimental beauty doesn’t matter. The bodies do. The famines do. The dreary lives do. They are reality.
Knowing that history, we cannot yield to it.
Today’s left is wedded to the idea that black people in America have no chance to live normal, fun, rewarding, successful lives. This idea is so compelling to them that the thought expressed in the Netflix movie American Son, that blacks can’t have the American Dream, leaves them anguished. Yet blacks in the millions live the American Dream every day, the Horatio Alger story of a poor kid from nowhere making a good life.
It happens routinely in America. Not the exception. The rule.
Sadly, the failures of socialism often, if not usually, lead people to make excuses for it. The excuses turn to pretense that the negative things aren’t real. Then to lies about how wonderful things really are. That happened in the thirties about Stalin’s Russia, in the forties about Hitler’s Germany, in the fifties about Mao’s China, in the sixties about Castro’s Cuba, in the seventies about Sandinista Nicaragua. It got turned back for a while, during and after Reagan, but it’s happening all over again today about Maduro’s Venezuela, etc., etc.
That’s where socialism unfailingly leads. Denials, pretenses, lies. Bodies, famines, dreariness.
People who are naturally leftists can wean themselves away from pretense and lies with practice in looking at what’s actually going on. But they have to accept that the ultimate arbiter is reality, not some theory or notion that starts out, “If everyone would just…” Today’s left in America burns and bombs and kills. It was the same in the sixties, when I began thinking about all this. Burning and bombing and killing aren’t part of any dream I ever had about social justice.
Perhaps curiously, America as founded was.
via American Thinker Blog
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