The idea of America — Bono re-affirms it
From 2014, a heartfelt one-minute statement by musician Bono:
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Politics
Orwell on Nazism as socialism
George Orwell, in contrast to those who want to distance National Socialism from their own preferred version of socialism: “National Socialism is a form of socialism, is emphatically revolutionary, does crush the property owner as surely as it crushes the worker.” [1] Also, and in fuller detail: “Internally, Germany [under the Nazis] has a good
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Against the new post-2016-Trump right too
As part of my Neither right nor left mantra, another datum. Most people use “right” and “left” journalistically: to designate shifting bundles of social-political beliefs and attitudes. The bundles are usually not internally coherent. So more analytic thinkers try to bring order out of mush by identifying multiple dimensions of contrast: individual versus collective, liberty
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Ignoring Hong Kong
Hong Kong’s economic transformation: 1960: Average per capita income in Hong Kong was 28 percent of Great Britain’s. 1996: Average per capita income in Hong Kong was 137 percent of Great Britain’s. Most of us want to know the magic formula that takes people from poverty to wealth. So a one-question quiz: Guess what happened
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Socialism in 1803—Saint-Simon’s religious-authoritarian version
“Anybody who does not obey the orders will be treated by the others as a quadruped …. All men will work; they will regard themselves as laborers attached to one workshop whose efforts will be directed to guide human intelligence according to my divine foresight. The Supreme Council of Newton will direct their works.” (Source:
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Socialism in 1928—George Bernard Shaw’s “kindly” version
Socialism in 1928 — George Bernard Shaw’s “kindly” version: “Socialism means equality of income or nothing. Under socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you liked it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character and industry enough to
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Bismarck on Welfare and Dependence on the State
Otto von Bismarck, the Chancellor of Germany, when he was arguing for his 1883 Welfare-State law proposals: “That the state should assist its needy citizens to a greater degree than before is not only a Christian and humanitarian duty, of which the state apparatus should be fully conscious: it is also a task to be
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Nationalism — Hayek and Buchanan
Two liberty-oriented Nobel-Prize winners are suspicious. Friedrich Hayek on nationalism as a halfway-house collectivism: “… it is this nationalistic bias which frequently provides the bridge from conservatism to collectivism: to think in terms of ‘our’ industry or resource is only a short step away from demanding that these national assets be directed in the national
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