Category: Capitalism | Page 2

The fountainhead of our despair | The Danielle Metz Show 079

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Nov 132019

Audio as broadcast on WBCQ

Politics may be downstream from culture but culture gets its notions and ideas from academia. If this is so then we are headed for disaster both culturally and politically.

Join Danielle and Robert as they connect the dots from a raving university debating professor who wins his debates by shouting profanities at his opponents to the latest terrible incarnation of Star Trek to the gong show that is the Democratic presidential nomination debates.

While most political and cultural trend lines today are pointing down, to locate the source, the fountainhead, of this frightening trend, look up to the ivory towers… and despair.

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607 – Why social ISm and capital ISN’T

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May 092019

Bonanza

Socialism’s growing appeal is often difficult to understand, particularly given capitalism’s demonstrated social, economic, and political superiority. However, the resistance to capitalism may have its roots in something far deeper than a failure to recognize its virtues and benefits.

Sad to say, most people have no clear idea of what capitalism and socialism actually are. Bathed in the contradictions of living in a mixed economy, many attribute the successes of capitalism to socialism, and socialism’s failures to capitalism. In the absence of an objective understanding of each ‘ism,’ this suggests a psychological or emotional association that is the source of their bias.

As always, the first rule in the art of political persuasion is ‘define or be defined.’ By allowing the ‘socialist’ Left to define the terms of the discussion, the ‘capitalist’ Right has been placed in an almost insurmountable disadvantage.

Consider that with their simple positioning of the words ‘socialism’ against ‘capitalism,’ socialists have already won a critical part of the debate. After all, the two ‘isms’ have little to do with each other, since ‘social’ and ‘capital’ are incompatible concepts. Continue reading »

606 – Socialism – The unknowable ideal

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May 022019

The growing appeal of socialism, particularly among the young, is both alarming and exceedingly dangerous.

The experience of socialism as manifested in countries outside the Western nations is generally alien to most Westerners, given their more capitalistic histories. The horror stories of mass starvation and genocide historically perpetrated in the name of socialism are rarely attributed to the nature of socialism itself, but to something otherwise dysfunctional within the particular culture.

Persistent is the false belief that destructive and failed variants of socialism simply weren’t socialism to begin with, and were instead some form of communism or fascism. The failed attempts at implementing socialism just weren’t done properly, argue socialists.

To distance themselves from the unavoidable and systemic evils of socialism, modern socialists have created the anti-concepts of ‘social democrat’ and ‘social democracy.’ If democracy has an Achilles’ heel that will lead to its own destruction, it is these ridiculous notions of ‘social democracy,’ and ‘social Democrats,’ both euphemisms for socialism and socialists. True democracy and socialism are simply incompatible, both in theory (as discovered through philosophy) and in practice (as repeatedly witnessed in history). Continue reading »

603 – Socialism’s many facades

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Apr 112019

It has recently been announced that Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign will focus on “exposing socialism,” a welcome objective to be sure, but no easy task.

Socialism appears in a myriad of forms, many individual components recognizable, yet with socialism’s greater destructive ideology remaining invisible to its victims.

For example, few would recognize socialism in government efforts to ‘fight climate change.’

To ‘fight climate change,’ governments have imposed what they call a ‘carbon tax’ or a ‘price on carbon’ – citing ‘carbon pollution’ as something that needs to be eliminated in order to keep the climate from changing. Continue reading »

590 – Hating capitalism

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Jan 102019

Capitalism as an ‘unknown ideal’ continues to be demonstrated in our popular media and discussion shows daily. Common fallacies about both capitalism and variant forms of socialism persist.

Two recent on-line discussions featuring well-known personalities – one between Russell Brand and Candace Owens, and another between Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson – provided perfect samplings of how both those on the ‘left’ and ‘right’ share many of the same anti-capitalistic sentiments. These myths demand a response because when acted upon, undesirable consequences arise for all of us.

‘Capitalism’ has become the word used to describe the economic condition that arises in a political and social environment of freedom. It is the ‘economic dimension’ of freedom and is only made possible when freedom’s other dimensions are in place.

Unfortunately, the word ‘capitalism’ was effectively created by Karl Marx so as to turn the idea of capitalism into a ‘political’ concept, which, unlike socialism, it is not. Whereas capitalism operates on the economic principle of supply and demand (under freedom), socialism operates by fiat. Continue reading »

Video – Capitalism vs The United Nations – The Story of Bangladesh

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Jan 092019

The failure of the United Nations model of aiding developing countries by doling out money to their governments has failed because it is a top-down model of wealth distribution not unlike the model used, with no success, by the former Soviet Union.

Bangladesh, once called a “basket case” by Henry Kissinger, suffered the same fate as every other country where the government received foreign aid. The aid never reached the people most in need of it.

Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank has demonstrated that micro-lending directly to the people is the best way to break the cycle of poverty. His bottom-up model of capitalism is the success story that is modern Bangladesh.

Salim Mansur, Professor Emeritus of Western University tells the story of that once war-torn and poverty stricken country and how one man, Muhammad Yunus turned it into a prospering nation.

583 – Globalism – A national crisis

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Nov 222018

Remembrance Day ceremonies in France this past November 11 turned out to be a sad reminder of much more than the 100-year-old tragedy that was WWI.

With French president Emmanuel Macron charging that “The old demons are rising again,” one is forced to conclude that he was looking in a mirror. Citing the dangers of ‘nationalism’ and the ‘collective good’ of ‘globalism,’ Macron demonstrated loud and clear that he is among the demons.

When he acknowledged that the “traces of this war never went away,” Macron was indeed ironic; socialism is still with us to this very day – and is on the rise, just as it was prior to the last two world wars. Thus, the key lesson that should have been learned from that history still remains undefined and continues to go unheeded.

In an inappropriate attempt to address U.S. president Donald Trump’s proud declaration that he is a ‘nationalist,’ Macron again ironically chose to use the Remembrance Day ceremonies as his opportunity to promote the very collectivism that the West was forced to fight during the last two world wars. Continue reading »