Althouse: "As an ideologically based movement, socialism is no longer vital."

July 3, 2012

"As an ideologically based movement, socialism is no longer vital."

"Today it’s a combination of democracy, rule of law and the welfare state, and I’d say a vast majority of Europeans defend this — the British Tories can’t touch the National Health Service without being beheaded."

54 comments:

roesch/voltaire said...: I agree many ideologies are becoming less vital. As Jonathan Krohn notes about his previous ideology:It was really reading philosophy that didn’t have anything to do with politics that gave me a breather and made me realize that a lot of what I said was ideological blather that really wasn’t meaningful. It wasn’t me thinking. It was just me saying things I had heard so long from people I thought were interesting and just came to believe for some reason, without really understanding it.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78068.html#ixzz1zZWIfa5E; 7/3/12, 10:01 AM
KCFleming said...: They won.

But all bills must be paid. The Tories won't need to cut the NHS, it's already being cut for lack of funds. See: Greece, Spain, Italy.

Like the profligate grandson of a wealthy man, shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.; 7/3/12, 10:04 AM
The Drill SGT said...: Thatcher said it best, if not first:

"The trouble with Socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people's money"; 7/3/12, 10:12 AM
SteveR said...: Idealogically it might no longer be vital, but politically there is still enough of other people's money to float the boat, for awhile longer. A little while.; 7/3/12, 10:14 AM
MikeAdamson said...: Depends what the writer means by "socialism." If we're talking about the system that wants to eliminate private ownership then of course it isn't but if we mean anything other than laissez faire capitalism then it's not only vital, it's reality.; 7/3/12, 10:15 AM
edutcher said...: Obviously, socialism is still holding sway. Another nonsense piece from the Gray Lady.

I suppose since Evan Thomas said in '09 we're all socialists now, the only way to re-elect President Choom is to say socialism is dead.

Until after the election, of course.

And that the Tories can't do anything about NHS or any other giveaway is what's killing Britain and all of Europe.

And it will kill us if we don't stop it.

Pogo said...

They won.

No, they're losing. We're watching it happen.; 7/3/12, 10:18 AM
Phil 314 said...: We're all socialists now!; 7/3/12, 10:19 AM
Triangle Man said...: At least one NHS Trust (South London) is bankrupt and about to go into "administration". Another 17 trusts are in precarious financial situations.; 7/3/12, 10:26 AM
Colonel Angus said...: Idealogically it might no longer be vital, but politically there is still enough of other people's money to float theboat,for awhile longer.

No, not really. Countries like Greece, Italy, Spain are proving that you can't sustain the type of generous welfare state they have even with large tax rates. Now even France is succumbing to the same kind of debt spiral that Greece is facing.

The truly sad part is a significant portion of the electorate and the Democrat party want to implement the same kind of economic poison pill in this country and think they can pay for it by taxing the top 1% of wage earners. So while socialism may not be vital, many of its idiotic tenents are still cherished by many.; 7/3/12, 10:26 AM
cubanbob said...: A rose or in this case a turd by any other name.....
Income redistribution isn't, never was and never will be a doctrine of capitalism.; 7/3/12, 10:29 AM
Michael K said...: France may have a socialist president but they have a more free market health care system than we have, or had before Obamacare. They also have the highest rated health care in Europe. I don't think that is a coincidence, Where socialism matters is in their unemployment numbers. That is what is dragging France down.; 7/3/12, 10:29 AM
La Pasionaria said...: The article shows whats wrong with todays left: Its quotes no socialists but only leftwing libertarians, people who adopt conservative or moderate positions on economic questions and radical positions on social issues.

A successful socialist movement, would be the exact opposite: Open to people who hold traditional opinions on social questions, but determined and clear on economic justice.

This President didnt stick up for single payer and not even for the public option. Instead we got a meaningless gay marriage endorsement (which wouldnt affect more than 9% of the population even if he could do something about it) and more immigration (i.e. cheap labor for corporations).

We can talk about socialism as a movement in the US, but its an abstract debate because Democrats gave up on it long ago.; 7/3/12, 10:32 AM
Anonymous said...: So socialism is now just nice lazy people wanting comfort (paid for by others). What could go wrong!; 7/3/12, 10:33 AM
ronalddewitt said...: Socialism never fails. If ever it appears to have failed, it turns out that it had been subsumed into a "cult of the personality." Remember that. "A cult of the personality" coming to a theater near you this summer.; 7/3/12, 10:33 AM
Michael said...: The core of Socialism - which is to say the will to power on the part of the self-appointed vanguard of the proletariat - remains. Since public ownership of the means of production has been discredited wherever tried, they have moved on to attempting to accomplish the same thing (money and power to people like them) through taxation and regulation. If the government can tell, say, an insurance company everything it can and cannot do, that is no different from owning the company outright.; 7/3/12, 10:34 AM
Christopher in MA said...: The British Tories can't touch the National Health Service without being beheaded.

Beheading might be one of the more pleasant aspects of the NHS. Check out James Delingpole's column in yesterday's Washington Times for a taste of what is coming.; 7/3/12, 10:35 AM
SteveR said...: No, not really

Actually yes. If people were awake and informed, it would not be but enough people still think free stuff, etc. is free. Europe may be hit sooner but the U.S. might re-elect Obama. Why? Because we are still able to print and borrow money. You think folks have any idea what's going to happen?; 7/3/12, 10:38 AM
traditionalguy said...: As grinning John Roberts has recently pointed out, the National Power can tax anything any way it says and than give away the stolen money for cronies, fake science fiction crisies and monthly benefit checks buying all of the votes at each periodic election.

So who needs a disgraced ideology granting the State a higher authority that justifies the thefts?

We are a conquored population. Gimme, Gimme, Gimme, or else ,is a simple enough idea for our lives.

And the State will have the only guns, the drones, and effective power over money that controls access to food will find voluntary compliance the rule.; 7/3/12, 10:38 AM
bagoh20 said...: The question is how long will the leftists continue to sit safely away in their lifeboats yelling to the third class passengers to stand firm, for they are on the unsinkable and grand Titanic, doing a great thing for mankind.

Who will be the last Flat-Earther?; 7/3/12, 10:39 AM
test said...: "Colonel Angus said... Countries like Greece, Italy, Spain are proving that you can't sustain the type of generous welfare state they have even with large tax rates."

How does this prove socialism is dead? The left blames the failure of the welfare state on capitalism and Germany's reluctance to work until they die so others can retire at 50.; 7/3/12, 10:42 AM
Colonel Angus said...: How does this prove socialism is dead

I didn't say it was dead. In point of fact I agree with you. The left, particularly in Europe will never admit that the social welfare state is a failure even as they stand upon its smouldering ruins.; 7/3/12, 10:53 AM
bagoh20 said...: You will never convince people like me on the benefits of Socialism. Someone who was born poor started out flat broke and homeless and eventually came to hire hundreds of people, watch them grow, excel, start their own businesses and families, come back happy and healthy, sometimes rich, primarily due to one thing: liberty - their's and mine.

I have certainly known the opposite who never gained a foot hold, couldn't escape poverty, and ended up relying on safety nets. Almost universally, their failure was also due to liberty. They were free to not succeed, because they didn't have to. It's the liberty of socialism, and it's like drinking salt water.

Thankfully, in my life the vast majority were the successful ones. The decision the successful ones made repeatedly was when offered the free lunch they refused - maybe not always, but eventually they turned their back on the most egregious of it. I was even on food stamps myself for a short time as young man. It was the low point of my life. - not the poorest I ever was, but definitely the low point.; 7/3/12, 10:54 AM
Patrick said...: Ella Binsburg: Open to people who hold traditional opinions on social questions, but determined and clear on economic justice.

I think it very odd to equate "economic justice" - whatever that means, with socialism.; 7/3/12, 10:55 AM
Kev said...: (the other kev)

Modern-day socialism is reactionary. There's no thought or idea, just the demand that some hated class give up their wealth so their 'betters' can use it.; 7/3/12, 10:58 AM
garage mahal said...: We can talk about socialism as a movement in the US, but its an abstract debate because Democrats gave up on it long ago.

Hell, modern conservatives think there own damn ideas are socialism. I blame Obama.; 7/3/12, 10:58 AM
Bob Ellison said...: Most people, and most voters, have no idea what "socialism" and "communism" mean. They tend to think saying "Obama is a communist" is a lie and an insult, but they don't tend to wonder what that statement means.; 7/3/12, 11:00 AM
TosaGuy said...: "The question is how long will the leftists continue to sit safely away in their lifeboats yelling to the third class passengers to stand firm, for they are on the unsinkable and grand Titanic, doing a great thing for mankind."

Precisely. It is pretty easy to like Obamacare if you won't be subject to it. Such people include gov't employees, non-profits, education establishments.

I want Scott Walker to give every state employee a $10,000 raise and end the health insurance benefit. Since Obamacare will be so wonderful, it should not be a problem for these employees, right?; 7/3/12, 11:01 AM
bagoh20 said...: "Hell, modern conservatives think there own damn ideas are socialism."

Often they are. People make mistakes. Cops steal, firemen commit arson, judges play advocate. It happens.; 7/3/12, 11:02 AM
William said...: Most everyone in Britain hates the NHS and most everyone wants to keep it. That's the real tragedy of the welfare state. The world is painted in a drab monotone, and this is considered egalitarian, not just by the color blind, but by those who have never seen a flash of color.; 7/3/12, 11:04 AM
Sydney said...: I agree with Pogo, they won.

My medical email listserves are full of people celebrating the triumph of Obamacare. They're so busy dancing they can't see the power that's been given to the state to compel us to purchase whatever they think we need to purchase - for the "public good" of course. Whatever that may be at any given moment.; 7/3/12, 11:05 AM
dreams said...: The reason liberals always win is because they love what they do which is gaining control of other people's lives, in effect turning the majority of us into children and why not, aren't they "the best and brightest".
Conservatives for the most part like do their own thing and believe other people should do the same.
So the Republican party is "the stupid party" because they are the amateurs and the Democrats are the professionals. Sadly, our country suffers the consequences.; 7/3/12, 11:12 AM
bagoh20 said...: "The world is painted in a drab monotone, and this is considered egalitarian, not just by the color blind, but by those who have never seen a flash of color."

And it's the preference of the people who should most despise it: artists, creative minds, people who prize their independence (or at least think they do) These are the first ones persecuted. They think that being free of the demands of supporting oneself and answering to their fellow citizens will allow them to be and do what they want, unfettered. It never happens like that - never has - never will. You end up with all that AND a coercive state forcing you to stay in the gray with no door out.; 7/3/12, 11:13 AM
William said...: Britain's NHS and, God help us, even Cuba's health care system are presented not as cautionary tales to be avoided but as examplars to be imitated.....Men used to die significantly younger than women. This was not related to physiology but to the fact that men smoked more than women. Any discrepancy in the mortality rates between Europeans and Americans can be explained by the fact that European cigarettes are foul and expensive, and people consequently smoke far less. That and the fact that traffic deaths are very rare because no one can afford to drive more than ten miles a week. It's not the socialized medicine that keeps Europeans ticking. It's their crappy, albeit virtuous, lifestyle.; 7/3/12, 11:16 AM
La Pasionaria said...: "I think it very odd to equate "economic justice" - whatever that means, with socialism."

Most anti-socialists do!

"Hell, modern conservatives think there own damn ideas are socialism. I blame Obama."

Not every state intervention is socialism. Only a few corporatist ideas are in the interest of workers and can be considered socialist in my view and healthcare mandates without public options are certainly not.; 7/3/12, 11:28 AM
cubanbob said...: ella binsburg said...
The article shows whats wrong with todays left: Its quotes no socialists but only leftwing libertarians, people who adopt conservative or moderate positions on economic questions and radical positions on social issues.

A successful socialist movement, would be the exact opposite: Open to people who hold traditional opinions on social questions, but determined and clear on economic justice.

I'm entitled and thus you owe me. Write the check. How is that for social justice?; 7/3/12, 11:46 AM
TosaGuy said...: "Only a few corporatist ideas are in the interest of workers and can be considered socialist in my view and healthcare mandates without public options are certainly not."

I agree that the Democrats aren't socialist. Today's Democrat party isn't interested in the least in people who work, at least in the sense of them doing well. They are, however, very interested in how to take their money and give it to those who don't work.; 7/3/12, 11:54 AM
Anonymous said...: Colonel,

Countries like Greece, Italy, Spain are proving that you can't sustain the type of generous welfare state they have even with large tax rates. Now even France is succumbing to the same kind of debt spiral that Greece is facing.

This is so obvious all these countries doubled down on socialism. France just elected a president who is a hardcore socialist. The lesson is easy to understand, but people don't, for whatever reason, as is obvious from these countries. I think it's clear these people who rather Europe sink back into the dark ages with another collapse of civilization rather than work for a living.; 7/3/12, 12:07 PM
traditionalguy said...: Socialism was free compared to the yoke of Obama-Pelosi fascism now being put upon our shoulders.

Query: When there is a National directorate agency necessary to do any businesses, then how can "employees" of those businesses be seen as anything except serfs.

They will not be able to leave their jobs for another job without permission, anymore than serfs could leave the landed estate they were born upon.

Rome is coming back, big time.; 7/3/12, 12:30 PM
ricpic said...: Hey binsburg, you stalinist bee from hell, tell us more about "economic justice," don't stint, lay it on thick137b uressmon as only you can.; 7/3/12, 12:32 PM
Michael K said...: "Most everyone in Britain hates the NHS and most everyone wants to keep it. That's the real tragedy of the welfare state. "

They call the first group, "the sick" and the second group "the well."

A friend of mine, an older surgeon professor in London, likes the NHS but it has been good to him. He is a consultant surgeon and professor making a good living all these years with no responsibility except to do good surgery.

What he is worried about is the fact that young women medical students, who are English in ethnicity, are becoming Muslim. Muslim women doctors are now refusing to scrub their arms in surgery. The infection rate is climbing and nobody seems able to do anything about it.; 7/3/12, 12:33 PM
george said...: Socialism, fascism, progressivism are all the same. They concentrate power in the hands of as few people as possible and dictate everything from the top down. It is a pointless intellectual exercise to try to delineate the differences because it only amounts to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

In the end they will all take you to the bottom with them.; 7/3/12, 12:39 PM
jungatheart said...: Pogo said...
They won.

But all bills must be paid. The Tories won't need to cut the NHS, it's already being cut for lack of funds. See: Greece, Spain, Italy.

Like the profligate grandson of a wealthy man, shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.

7/3/12 10:04 AM
----------

A variant of starve the beast.; 7/3/12, 1:32 PM
Peter said...: "First, then, State Socialism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by the government, regardless of individual choice. "

Benjamin Tucker
--; 7/3/12, 1:45 PM
Cedarford said...: William said...
Most everyone in Britain hates the NHS and most everyone wants to keep it.
===============
In Europe, Asia - the US healthcare system is looked at as the worst, most expensive, most inefficient system in the advanced world...With unthinkable numbers of lower level citizen workers locked out, but somehow not illegal aliens locked out, of access. With medical bankruptcies. Denial of insurance for those with genetic risks or cancer or dropping of insurance of those with a long-term illness.

No one in Asia or Europe wants that piece of American shit.

The talk in the UK is never about how to get American health care system imported. It is how to make the PHS as good as the French, German, or Japanese, Singporean models.; 7/3/12, 3:09 PM
KCFleming said...: @Cedarford. "No one in Asia or Europe wants that piece of American shit."

Then the Chinese and Spanish folks I see here in the USA for medical care have some explaining to do.; 7/3/12, 3:20 PM
Calypso Facto said...: C4 channels Yogi Berra: "No one goes there nowadays, it's too crowded."; 7/3/12, 3:39 PM
Cedarford said...: No one wants the American system imported into their countries.
On the other hand, if you are very rich, are immigrating into the US to get a great job, or getting free "cadillac care" as an illegal from Mexico....

It's just fucking great!!; 7/3/12, 3:48 PM
MnMark said...: Most of the Left understands now that the way to get the most money out of their productive slaves is to let them create it first in a relatively free market (relative to communism, anyway) and then confiscate it AFTER it's been created. That produces a lot more money then seizing all the property and trying to motivate the slaves to work for nothing, as in the Soviet Union.

But socialism weakens a society by reversing the rewards for productivity and penalities for unproductivity that exist in nature and in free markets. A la "Idiocracy", the population gets stupider as the lazy and stupid have children with abandon and the prudent hold back from having children.

So our socialist West will slowly sink into a miasma of egalitarian mediocrity. It could be hundreds or thousands of years before a new society that is beautiful and excellent in the way the West used to be springs up, just like Rome and Greece have never recovered from their degeneration.

But there is going to be a tremendous competitive advantage for whichever society or people organizes itself again around the "creative destruction" of social Darwinism, of free markets, first. They are going to have easy pickings from the soft, degenerate socialist societies of the West. I personally hope it will be a core of committed white Western men who rise up in this fashion, something like the first American Revolutionaries sprung up from the English colonists. There's no knowing for sure, but that's where my hopes lie as I watch the fruits of the first American Revolution accelerate their decay.

(I read someone called Obamacare and the notorious Roberts decision "The Declaration of Dependence." Fitting name.); 7/3/12, 4:22 PM
Alex said...: C4 - for those Americans "haves", the health care system is top notch. For everyone else, not so much. You can keep the NHS.; 7/3/12, 4:33 PM
Alex said...: Oh and is Singapore allowing millions of illegal aliens in to test that wonderful healthcare system?; 7/3/12, 4:34 PM
virgil xenophon said...: You people are talking about the wrong "ism." What we are witnessing under Obama is Fascist Corporatism. One doesn't have to own the means of production if one totally regulates it such that the pvt sector can only exist by doing their govt masters bidding. And the "Crony Capitalism" exhibited by the sweetheart deals favored companies like Solyndra, et al got--along with the favored status shown unions, favored industries and Blue States who are, for example, exempted from the worst aspects of Obamacare follow the histiorical Nazi and Italian Fascist Corporatist playbook. Hitler nwas once asked in a newspaper interview circa 1936 where he thought his arch enemy Communism would eventually end up, to which he replied: "Oh, I think they'll eventually end up where we already are.." And true enough, the emphasis on the "National" in Socialism and widespread corruption and crony corporate dealings is exactly what the SU under Brezhnev et al ended up being. Hitler was very perceptive in this regard. Like Nixon, he had a uncanny genius for unsentimental political analysis. Sportsfans, Corporate Fascism is what we are witnessing unfolding before our very eyes.; 7/3/12, 4:49 PM
Joe Schmoe said...: Did anyone read the article? So much leftist cant parading as accepted fact that I didn't make it past the third graf.; 7/3/12, 8:04 PM
Joe Schmoe said...: According to the article, bagoh, you can thank socialism for your ascension to middle class.; 7/3/12, 8:10 PM
grackle said...: Over the years since Marxism was thrust upon the world watered down secondhand Marxist principles have become accepted as part of the conventional wisdom in the USA(healthcare needs reforming!).

If Romney wins the trend may be slowed. If Obama wins it will accelerate. Either way, government intrusion will probably grow until the government controls everything.; 7/4/12, 11:03 AM