Comments Which Conservatives Block from Their Blogs For May 8, 2019

May 4

To Joe Carter and his blogpost criticizing Millennials for preferring to live in a Socialist or Communist nation despite the history of certain nations. This appeared in the Acton blog.

2 points should be made here. Just as Millennials might prefer to live in a Socialist or even Communist nation because they don't know what one is from experience, neither do conservative critics of Marxism, Socialism, and Communism. That fact that the majority of Millennials prefer a kind a nation in which they have never lived to a Capitalist nation in which they live is very telling. That preference is, in and of itself, a huge indictment on Capitalism and a significant indicator that Capitalism has failed them. And the details of their disillusionment with Capitalism should be looked into.

But Conservative apologists would rather divert everyone's attention to their view of Marxism, Socialism, and Communism--which many, not all, Conservatives tend to blend together in the forms of the Soviet Union, Red China, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela. They opportunistically scapegoat Marx for the totalitarianism of those states. But what they don't mention are the conditions and type of leaders who were replaced by the "Communists." And they neglect the backgrounds and contexts of those Marxist states with good reason. In the cases of the Soviet Union and Cuba, the "Communist" overthrew the totalitarian and corrupt governments. The Batista government in Cuba was supported by the US. In the case of China and North Korea, both were emerging from Japanese totalitarian rule. China broke away from Japan both in the 1920s and the end of WW II while North Korea broke away at the end of WW II.
The history of Venezuela was different in that the Socialist leader was elected to power. However, 2 factors should be considered here. First, Chavez never followed Marx in terms of redistributing power to the proletariat. Instead, like Lenin did when he hijacked the Russian Revolution, Chavez consolidated power. Here Rosa Luxemburg's criticism of Lenin's Bourgeoisie dictatorship is more condemnatory of Chavez because Chavez didn't have a subsequent Civil War to fight. Though Chavez called himself a 'socialist,' by not empowering the proletariat, he broke away from the fundamental tenet of Marxism. In addition, though some of Venezuela's economic problems could possibly be due to US intervention, much of its economic problems stem from following the failed history of the past: basing the economy on oil. While prices rise, that seems like a good idea, but when prices drop, the economy collapses. That occurred during the late 1980s and into the 1990s before socialism, and that also occurred under Chavez.

What conservatives conveniently forget are those nations that through democracy started to lean left only to end up in dictatorships. Examples of those nations include Iran ('53), Guatemala ('54), Greece ('67), and Chilé ('73). Why these examples are conveniently forgotten is because in each of those cases, the US had a significant hand in overthrowing the governments of those nations and replacing them with dictatorships. Other examples could have also been mentioned.

We should note that history shows that no one political-economic system guarantees eternal success and prosperity. But what we can look at is the location of power in a given political system. And one criteria by which we should fairly apply to all governments and political systems is to measure the degree to which a government is under elite-centered control or democratic control. Here, we cannot judge any nation simply by the label given to its political system. For elite-centered control governments can exist in nations that actually have "fair" elections in that people are freely voting for the candidates of their choice. Why? Because even here in the US, our system has now been fairly recategorized by some as an oligarchy (see https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 and https://theintercept.com/2015/07/30/jimmy-carter-u-s-oligarchy-unlimited-political-bribery/ ). And the reason why its status has changed is because power is not defined by the political office one holds, but by the degree of influence one has. And it has become measurably clear that those with the most wealth have the greatest political power in our nation. And that is despite, or perhaps because of, our Capitalist economic system.
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May 5

To Bradley Birzer and his blogpost on democracy. In that article he talked about the need to reduce, but not eliminate democracy in a given nation. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

Why is it that the negative comments about democracy were not vetted here. Certainly the founding fathers opposed democracy. But why? Was it not because many of them replaced British leaders as the new elites of America? Was it not because the people were protesting and even tried a rebellion that threatened the place of these new elites and thus prompted the writing of The Constitution? And did not the founding fathers associate those populist ideas that challenged their position in society with democracy but did so in a derogatory fashion. And don't we see a significant arrogance by those who claimed that the general population did not want virtue and thus implying that the new elites had a monopoly on virtue?

Those above spoke against democracy not necessarily because they knew what it would become. They spoke against democracy our of self-interest and in opposition to popular ideas that could have alleviated some of the suffering of the people, ideas that would have cost the new elites some wealth and position.

Authoritarians don't like democracy. Neither do tribalists. Why? Perhaps it is because democracy is the rule of the people, it is the rule of all the people, not just the majority. Democracy, when looked at as being more than just the sum of certain political processes, can actually be a state of being. It is a state of being, as Jefferson envisioned it, where the nation belongs equally to all its citizens. Democracy is a state of being where society is shared equally by all. When, if ever, we reach democracy as a state of being, we will have greatly reduced, if not eliminated rule by either a few elites or by an ethnic group that assumes its own superiority.

We should note that like any other form of government, democracy does not produce some form of utopia. No political or economic system can do that. But what democracy as a state of being does do is that it prevents the centralization of power whether the centralization of that power be located either in the public or private sectors. And those who are concerned about the rise of tyranny should favor democracy over any other form of government.

Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For February 14, 2018

Feb 9

To Joe Carter and his blogpost on the Dow Jones exchange and other economic tidbits. This appeared in the Acton blog.

There is something missing in what people, not just Christians, should know about the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The Dow, and other exchanges, shows that our economy revolves around the shareholder. And when that is the case, all other stakeholders of the economy are relegated to being mere objects of profit for the good pleasure of the shareholders. And when referring to shareholders here, we should note that since in publicly owned companies, each share gets a vote, those with the most shares, those who have the most  money to invest, get the most votes and thus are able to control the direction and decisions made by any publicly owned company. Those with the least power in such companies are the other stakeholders. The executive board of a given publicly owned company are there to serve the interest of the shareholders with the most say.

We should note something else about publicly owned companies. Only those who have bought stocks that were originally issued by the company have invested their money into the company. Those who bought shares from previous owners gain the political power of those owners but have invested no money into a given publicly owned company. So they are there to garner the profits of the company more so than those who bought shares from the company itself. This can make shareholders the economic equivalent of absentee slumlords.

The de facto purpose of many publicly owned companies is to maximize the ROI for the shareholders--which is part of maximizing profits for a given publicly owned company. Maximizing the ROI for investors and maximizing profits for the company presents themselves as a conflict of interest with paying all employees fair pay and in protecting the environment from any environmental footprint that the operation of the company and use of its products causes. In addition, part of the maximizing ROIs and profits causes companies to employ lobbyists whose job is to get the government to favor their own companies over the rest of the population. And part of getting the government to favor their own companies includes the use of both legal and illegal bribes in the form of providing favors for elected officials and giving campaign contributions to ensure elected officials job security.

Now the ability to make above observations doesn't require one to take any classes in economics. One only needs to read and ask economists a few questions. And the ability to draw implications from the above observations only requires one to employ logic. And so it doesn't take an economist to realize that we have an economy that exists to serve the interests of the wealthy while all others are made into disposable objects for profit. And why we tolerate a system where investors, who never have put a dime into a company, have all the say and workers, some of whom have labored for a company for decades, are mere disposable objects for profit who have no say in the company is a mystery for a nation that once was a "Christian nation" whose scriptures that teach that the love of money is strongly associated with evil. 

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To Caroline Roberts and her blogpost on how Millennials prefer Socialism. This appeared in the Acton blog.

I would agree that Millennials don't know what socialism is. But what is also true is that they could never learn about socialism from its conservative antagonists. For those conservative antagonists of socialism are content both to be  historical opportunists and content to describe socialism as a monolith.

First, what many conservatives called socialism was Bolshevism. And the leader of the revolution that made Bolshevism into Communism was not only criticized by some of his socialist contemporaries for introducing a bourgeoisie dictatorship, Lenin mocked those to the left of him as being 'infantile'--a description that seems some what synonymous with some conservative criticisms of socialism. This, as well as Mao's and Castro's revolutions are what conservative antagonists of Socialism want people to think about when they think about Socialism. Of course, conservative antagonists of Socialism forget that, in Nicaragua, a leftist revolution turned to a democracy rather than continued a dictatorship. In addition,  conservative antagonists forget that many of the leftist revolutions were executed in order to overthrow Capitalist supported dictatorships. Also, conservative antagonists forget that some Socialist leaders were democratically elected by their people. Thus a very selective use of history is opportunistically employed by many conservative antagonists of Socialism.

Second, if many socialists dissented from what Lenin and those who followed him did, how is it that socialism could rightfully viewed as a monolith? And yet, conservative are more than happy to do that. In addition, what helped Bolshevism obtain the power it wanted was due to a walkout of a Socialist Russian Congress by the Mensheviks. In addition, not only did Lenin purge his own Socialist party, he called those on the left who opposed him 'infantile.' Socialist detractors denounced Lenin for the structure of his government and how he ruled. So how is that conservative antagonists of Socialism can honestly portray Socialism as a monolith?

Let's be clear, the number 1 priority of Socialism from the Marxist tradition is the redistribution of power, not wealth, into the hands of workers. Why? It is because the structure of Capitalism relegates workers to that of being disposable objects. So Marx saw the empowering of workers, what he called the 'proletariat dictatorship,' as the way to change society from being controlled by the bourgeoisie to that of his utopian classless society.

Now, one doesn't have to agree with Marx on his belief in a utopian dreams or in the proletariat dictatorship to believe in the empowering of workers. For the closest thing we have to Marxism in the world today can be found in Germany, which has a very successful economy, that has laws called codetermination laws. In those laws, publicly owned companies of varying sizes are required to have certain percentages of workers on a company's executive board. This partial transfer of power from owners/employers to workers partially follows Marx's Socialism. And thus Germany's use of codetermination starts to approach the Marxist socialism that is so demeaned conservative antagonists.

As mentioned before, the monolithic view of socialism is based on some of the socialist revolutions that overthrew dictators who were supported by Capitalists. Those Capitalists that supported the dictators came from both within nations that went through a revolution as well as capitalists from nations like the the US. Emerging socialist leaders who were democratically elected to office often found themselves targeted by the US for regime changes that saw the replacement of democratic processes with dictators who showed favor to American business interests. Such examples can be found in Iran ('53), Guatemala ('54), Brazil (around '64), Greece ('67), and Chile ('73). An example where a leftist revolution that resulted in a democracy but was viciously attacked by terrorists sponsored by the US can be seen in Nicaragua during the 1980s. There are other examples capitalist engineered coups. But none of Capitalism's attacks on democracies and support for dictators ever finds their way into the comments made by conservative antagonists of socialism. I wonder why.

With growing wealth disparity both within nations and between nations along with an economic caste system maintained by the use of  comparative advantage, we see that today's form of Capitalism, which is called neoliberalism, gives more and more power to those with wealth even over their own nations' governments as well as over the governments of other nations. This form of Capitalism is not the same form of Capitalism that followed WW II. And yet, just as conservative antagonists of Socialism refer to Socialism as a monolith, they do the same to Capitalism. Thus, the successes of a previous form of Capitalism, a Keynesian form called the Bretton-Woods system in which egalitarian economic growth was seen in all of America's economic classes even though it was under a state-capitalism model, are attributed to today's neoliberalism. And such dishonesty can fly under the radar for most people because they are preoccupied with other matters and rely on the stereotypes of economic systems provided by conservative defenders of not just Capitalism, but of neoliberalism.

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Feb 10

To Joseph Mussomeli and his article protesting victimology and what he sees as other inappropriate reactions to past oppressions. This appeared in the Imaginative Conservative blog.

What is apparent in the above article is that once oppression stops, the writer of the article expects the victim to think and act as if the oppression never existed. And it isn't just Mussomeli who expects that; it is those groups who oppressed others who believe that as well. Such an expectation is the wishful thinking of all oppressors and their allies everywhere. For such an expectation basically says that though the oppression suffered was wrong, it was really not so bad that there should be long-term aftereffects. Such an expectation is at least a denial of the full guilt that should be felt by the oppressors.

After all, we are talking about centuries of severe marginalization for Blacks and the LGBT community in this nation--of course, let's not forget Native Americans and other minorities. And that marginalization, though significantly reduced, is still in effect today. We still have significant racism in our nation. And though same-sex marriage is now legal, the LGBT community is far from experiencing an equal status in society in many places in our nation.

If we were to look at the marginalization and oppression of different groups as we look at severe traumas, we wouldn't be surprised at what some would call overreactions and/or overcompensation for past wrongs. So why should we be upset by what conservatives call 'victimology'? This is an important question because the term itself is just meant to demean the degree of past suffering certain groups experienced for very long periods of time. We shouldn't be upset at 'victimology' and other reactions to past and current oppression by those who have been oppressed and marginalized because they are exhibiting normal human reactions to past, and unfortunately still current, horrific conditions.

The above article shows more concern for the sensitive feelings of groups guilty of being oppressors than it is concerned for the reactions of victims that have gone too far. And considering that those groups of oppressors consist mainly of white, male Christians, what we see is that an appropriate repentance has never been experienced  by my fellow white, male Christians. Rather, what we is a tribal response that only guarantees future conflicts and thus crushes all hopes for any kind of real resolution. And worst of all, what we see is a case being made by these white, male Christians that says: "Even though we made mistakes, we still deserve our place of supremacy over all others.."