11 November 2005

A Little Schaudenfreude

The beneficiaries of the French arm of the great western european social welfare system are rioting and looting in the streets of Paris. A secret little piece of many in the good old USA is experiencing a little bit of Schaudenfreude-that's shameful joy when translated into plain ole murrican talk, for those out there (and you know who you are) who don't watch The Simpsons.

Remember when we were the bad guys for kicking Saddam's sorry backside, compatriots?

We are not colonists by force. The United States never has been a nation of colonial bent. We were the colonies that started it all by telling King George III to get a big old hammer, go to the Aussie outback, and pound all that sand up his...well, you know where.

We know that colonies will turn on their Empire. We INVENTED that!

God bless it, the French accepted the young American nation just to enfuriate the British. And then they go and act like themselves once we had a pulse and the British realized that we would probably continue doing grievous harm to their military presence elsewhere.

But the French kept colonizing. That is a country that could qualify for Special Ed. They were the ones who got run out of Vietnam at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. It took Algeria another six years, mainly because the French forces could not get their Regie Renault tanks to go into reverse as they were designed to. The grommets fell out on the same day as Dien Bien Phu, but it took Renault six years to send the parts overland. It had something to do with the engines flooding off Marseilles.

This one is all yours, France. We owe you for dragging us into two World Wars and Vietnam. For the courage of every Charles DeGaulle and Resistance fighter, there was a platoon of cretins predisposed to Jerry Lewis and warm wine kowtowing to the Vichy Nazis.

And now, after fifty years of public pronouncements of how America's social system is racist and inadequate; after proclaimations of the moral and intellectual superiority of the French system; after telling us to have a nice life in the Iraqi desert, what the hell happened?

40 percent unemployment among the immigrant community in France? Our immigrants work, diligently. They assimilate, perhaps not as rapidly as some would wish, but they assimilate.

Mexicans and Central Americans are not burning cars in Los Angeles. Puerto Ricans aren't doing so in New York. They're buying the cars instead, along with their Cuban brothers and sisters who fled to Florida and escaped a tyrant.

France, you have yourselves to blame. The cradle-to-grave social systems of your modern western european model have destroyed initiative. The dole has given immigrants in France an elevated standard of living that will be ultimately unsustainable. If immigrants in France have no incentive to succeed, they will have no incentive to contribute to French society. If there is no incentive to contribute, it will depress the motivation to identify with Paris or Lyon instead of Algiers. What happens in twenty or fifty years when the most common first name in Nice is Mohammed instead of Jean or Pierre?

This is a good one for America to sit out. Eventually we will observe the culture that gave us Sartre and Proust, fading into obscurity. France may die alone, loved only by leftists on the other side of the Atlantic.

For fifty years, the question posed to capitalists has been "Why should an affluent society let the poorest live in misery when they can be helped?"

The answer is that the private sector is the only mechanism that has consistently brought people out of despair. Public sector programs do not end poverty adequately; rather they function as justification for an ever-widening stream of bureaucrats and social workers.

The far left is about to join the extreme right over issues of undocumented immigration in this country. The far right, in the guise of Pat Buchanan, is embracing the idea of a wall between the US and Mexico. The far left has chosen the environment as their battleground.

The truth is that the far right, on issues of "preserving language and culture," has aped the party of Jean Le Pen in France, and the extreme left has rebadged from "Socialist" to "Green" masking a similar anti-diversity, anti-Israel, anti-semitic message.

The far left, with the environment as their venue, will come down on illegals ineligible for their ineffective programs, i. e. repatriating dissenters. The objective of the far right is similar, although their motivating citerion will be the scoundrel's sanctuary of Nationalism.

Nationalism? Excuse me, but everybody in America is from somewhere else! It has worked pretty well for oh, about a couple of hundred years, maybe this is something worth keeping?

Embrace nationalism and one-note environmentalism, as significant numbers in France have done, and the next cars burning won't be Peugeots.

They'll be Chevies.

04 November 2005

Good Buddy Hugo Chavez

Fidel's good buddy Hugo Chavez is at it again, screaming about how he will bury FTAA, and how he is planning to begin a "news" and propaganda network named Telesur.

Oh Lord, here we go. Hugo Chavez is Socialist Lite. He has all of the trappings of a freely elected leader, a masqureade to cover his abuses of Human Rights among dissenters in Venezuela. He gets Jimmy Carter to come down and sanction his election, and he's a groovy little darling of the left.

By means of loud denunciations of the United States, he appeals to a disenfranchised population in Latin America. Were he offering a true method of reform, this would certainly be something that could appeal to those who embrace liberty.

Regrettably, he just parrots the anti-Bush left in the United States, pawning off half-truths and outright lies indicting this country of radical, systematic racism; neglect of the poor; the elimination of the middle classes, yada, yada, yada.

Tell ya what, Huguito, when the middle class in your country is as big as the one in this country, or bigger, then you can talk about how unfair we are. Until that day, please do everyone in the hemisphere a favor and shut your pie-hole.

There are problems in Latin America, but the question is as to which countries have the greatest numbers of people trying to get out by any means possible. Obviously, Mexico and El Salvador have issues with entrenched anti-libertarian authority. Guatemala has been looted like a New Orleans Wal Mart, as has Haiti. Colombia has been fighting a bloody and vicious civil war for the last fifty years. Brazil has a middle level of corruption that rivals the worst ruined mechanisms in Mexico. Reform of problems like these is not coming overnight, because the problems did not spring up overnight.

Reform of these issues is a desirable thing. Mexico has made great strides in improving the situation. Privatization has not been the best situation in Argentina, but the Chileans have done well, and could be emulated. Costa Rica has functioned as a tolerant, peaceful republic for the last 57 years. Ecuador has had issues, as has Peru, but both countries are progressing as compared to Venezuela under demagogue Chavez.

Chavez mocks the peaceful transition of power, as exists now in the nations he chides. He has acted exactly as he has accused Bush of acting...stealing elections, judicial fiat, disregard of world opinion, hiding out with despots.Where are the leftists doing that finger-wagging shame shame thing when it's their lap dog?

Credit is given where credit is due. Bush has honestly taken steps with Mexico's President Fox to improve the standard of living in Mexico. He has managed this without diminishing the United States' standard of living. What has hurt the US economy has had nothing to do with Mexico, and everything to do with a necessary demonstration of force that was woefully underestimated by the Bush administration.

Vicente Fox has nothing to be ashamed of with regard to the improvements in Mexico. Bush is not a fool, either; he understands that his country has a vital strategic interest in having a productive, free, democratic, and eventually prosperous Mexico sitting on Texas' back door.

The center right has grasped several points.

Rhetoric does not effect change, but it does bring about productive dialogue. Blame-and-shame games accomplish nothing. Government is not the solution to the problem, it is the problem. Open trade improves both sides. Good neighbors are a mutual asset. Solutions are best found through ingenuity and individual initiative as opposed to committees and programs.

Bush has been accoutable for his failures, with a free press and open criticism. Chavez passes the buck to Bush with paranoia and demagogic pedantry.

It may be just to state that the left would not fare as well if it were subjected to the same level of scrutiny and accountability. The tactic of blaming Bush and the Republicans has passed from the merely inane to the totally asinine.

The only tools left for the totalitarian, authoritarian left (and right!) are appeasement, isolation, propaganda, and suppression of dissent. These are the tools Fidel and his Good Buddy Hugo Chavez use on a daily basis.

If the left wishes to replace what exists now, then it will be incumbent upon them to prosper using the same rule book. After all, it is only fair, and the left claims that they are much more fair than the middle or the right.

Free human beings are the best judge of what is fair, not dictators who stack the deck.