Reconciling the Unreconcilable: The President at Our Lady

(Click on pic, or click here. You will be taken to a C-Span webpage. Click on the "Flash Video" icon on the right side and a video window will open.)

"And we must find a way to reconcile our ever-shrinking world with its ever-growing diversity -- diversity of thought, diversity of culture, and diversity of belief." (President Obama, May 17, 2009.)

It's possible that for a great many of you who come here, that I have read or watched a lot of stuff you've never seen. My interest is in "how" Leftists get to where they have got, and how they create a system of thought and belief that is in such stark contrast to my system of thought and belief.

As an aside, if you have access to CNBC, tonight at 6pm there promises to be an interesting roundtable on capitalism. From the promos that have run so far this morning, one word repeatedly grabbed my interest: trust.

I also want to apologize to you. When I started the "Carrots" series, it was my intention to bring the reader up to a level of Freshman Econ 101. (Hence, the tag "Econ 101".) There still lies in the "draft" bin a post on resource allocation and the dilemma of scarcity. It's an important non-post, since I rely so much on an understanding of how the market deals with the problem of resource allocation and scarcity, and what passes for education on the Left. The propaganda that is being peddled by the Left on these issues was brought home last Summer, as my recently high school graduated son and I spent time repairing the damage to my home and office due to the December, 2007 hurricane.

My son's teachers adhered--and adhere--to a definite Leftist cant. English, science, history, his teachers repeated the mantra of the Left. Republicans are anti-science exploiters who are ruining the world with their greedy corporations. Class dismissed.

If this is the reduction of the education experience of our youngsters, it's not surprising that the silliness of this man's thoughts are treated with the apparent adulation that it received during the presentation of those thoughts.

This presentation is painful to watch.

But I implore you to watch it. This is the type of babble that you hear when Leftists get together. And it explains a great deal of how Leftists find themselves saying the things that come out of their mouths. In their rush to "reconcile", they throw the intellectual baby out with the bath water. Our President seeming to say one thing, and then contradicting that statement with his next? It isn't inconsistency. It's reconciling diversity. It's how the Left explains everything that it pronounces. Obama and the Dems quadruple our nation's annual deficit? It's because President Bush's administration sat over a large deficit. Sure, only a quarter of the size, but can't you see that there was no choice? There's old system concerns and new system concerns. And the job of our smart, sciency policy makers is to reconcile the old with the new.

What David Korten attempts to do is frightening in as much as he is able to make in-roads as a spokesman for the Left. When he talks about "phantom wealth," much of what he says could be interpreted by the Ron Paul crowd as a recognition that our fiat system is at the root of all faults found in Capitalism. Paulists are warned: this guy is going in a totally different direction.

If you follow--or attempt to follow--the sequence of utterances made by Mr. Korten, one is left with the idea that a better question than "how much does this cost?" would be "what good does this do?"

This is the starting point for the many folks in academia and the folks ensconced in policy offices around the state.

The market system, or what is referred to as our capitalist system, works because of our trust. I trust you to make your best, independent economic decision. You trust me, too. This is an essential feature of that old skeleton called liberty. It is in our economic liberty that we are truly free. Just like our farmer in the "Carrots & Bicycles", we move forward based upon our understanding of the opportunities that each of us has. Whether it's too much time on the x-box, or too much time landing that next big account, each of us makes choices.

And each of us is responsible for the outcome of those choices.

It is this economic liberty that is under assault by the Left. It is framed by the condemnation of money by Mr. Korten. Instead of asking how much is that SUV? and getting an answer of $50-thousand dollars, we should instead be told "three kids in the Sudan", or some such. For those of us who are well-read, the looney rantings of a guy like Mr. Korten should be dismissed as quickly as it takes to re-read the history of the former Soviet Union's attempt to create a moneyless society.

Markets are more powerful than governments. Whether it was the Lesser Developed Countries involved in the LDC crisis back in the '80's, or the current governments of Iran, Venezuela, and now, the United States, turning your back on the fundamentals of economic individualism and aggregation is a stupid policy. Even if it means that you're "putting things in terms of human value."

This is no different than the trendy profession of Lefty prof's from Lewis & Clark College during the '70's. Another restatement of the Labour Theory of Value. A policy that attempts to "put a human face" on political and economic policies. There is nothing new here. This is simply Marxism with another face. And it goes a long way in explaining how someone like our governor can see the expense of hiring more state workers is an economic solution to unemployment. While the money will come from the private sector, the benefits will accrue to us all. Beautiful, really. It's a closed-system.

Fortunately, we have the experience of such great men as Karl Popper.

What motivated me to mention Sir Karl was the role played by the Vichy during WWII. How many times must we be presented with "socialism with a different face" before we begin to see how important economic liberty is to us, to our system of government, and the future of our society? Are you surprised to find out that the Vichy accepted rule from Berlin? How was the socialism of the Germans different from the socialism of the Italians, and then different from the socialism of the French? How different will be the new face of socialism in America?

So, listen to the words of Mr. Korten, as painfully obscure as they are. Ask yourself how you would go about organizing an economic system if we continue to adopt the policies and practices of Mr. Korten, Governor Kulongoski, and Speaker of the House, Dave Hunt? It's not jobs, it's the "right" jobs. It's not investment. It's the "right" investment. And who will make the decision as to that which is "right"?

You can't guess?

They don't trust you. They don't trust me. We must be told, therefore, what to do or we will destroy the world, children, teachers and union employees. (Oh, I forgot, teachers are union employees.)