George Handlery about the week that was. The Left’s real agenda. Who is to blame? Everybody to become President. The present danger is that it is not PC to admit it. What turns off the warning lights. Misapplied welfare and its consequences.
 
1. What the rank and file individually opposes or supports reveals the real agenda of  movements. The “democratic Left” in Europe and the “Liberals” in the USA claim to be secular, pro-woman and growth oriented. They are also for the exchange of ideas and diversity as well as full employment.  In fact, if it is anti-Western, they have much understanding for dogmatic, religion-fed extremism. They also drop their heroic stand for women if someone, such as Islamists on their home turf or in “their” districts within Europe, practice things such as forced marriage, honor killings and hate-speech.
Meanwhile, the official cause of diversity serves as an excuse not only to forbid criticism but also to demand, beyond tolerance, approval. Being merciful, the topic of economic ideas and its negative relationship to full employment and prosperity shall be ignored. The inconsistency referred to is only apparent. If one digs deeper, an unfailing pursuit of goals emerges. Motivated by self-hate and the frustration of not being majority-capable on policy alone, the Left has opted for an indirect strategy. It utilizes a misapplied mutation of some element of classical liberalism. With a twist, the laissez faire values of the creed can be exploited so as to undermine the cultural pillars that support the political and social order of liberty.
 
2. Discovered among old notes. It comes from a print-free corner torn out of a 1989 edition of the old Pravda. (It used to be the cheapest international publication and had next-day delivery.) The scribbling says, “For the first time we are in the fortuitous position that we will have to blame ourselves for our future reverses. Faulting the conditions imposed by others upon us will be relegated to a secondary role. Otherwise, there is reason to feel confident. Every successful people has begun on top of a pile of ruins”. Both the bit about who will be accused and the expected record created by what was then still the future, have been wrong.
 
3. All of the above triggers an association. Now that a person of color is America’s President, the professional equalitarians should be in danger of losing their jobs. Misery and discrimination pay well those who administer them. A good approach to avoid calamity to the chosen levelers that are allowed to select, would be a new project. The function-preserving test of equal opportunity should be redefined. Some time in the future, all those that are not pinkish-white pigmented should become President. This is a useful goal, as its pursuit will maintain the “apparat” fighting discrimination simply because the realization of the goal might take time.
 
4. The creeping danger. What really threatens advanced societies is not the violent direct attack of its internal and external adversaries. Against such enemies, they dispose over adequate defenses. Hitler, Mussolini, Japanese militarism, the USSR and the small fry imitating them can testify to that. However, to be applied, the means of effective defense need to be triggered. It is the open attack – the ideal scenario is a copy of Pearl Harbor – that turns on the red warning lights. With that done, the mechanisms of defense can be activated. The precondition is that the political decision to react be made possible. To be thusly enabled, democratic institutions and their society must be alerted. This demands that undeniable evidence be provided that their compromise oriented system of conflict resolution has failed. It takes the foe’s aggressive contempt that this activation should occur on account of the enemy’s unilateral decision that is rooted in systemic irrationality.
The traditional external totalitarian threat represented by major powers and supported internally by an isolated group committed to their ideology, represents a challenge that differs from the current danger. The confrontation with the Islamists and collectivists involves a struggle whose stakes appear to be less obvious than was the case with the historical secular totalitarian enemy. The new treat is not put together primarily by the easily demonstrated military-industrial power of the foe. His limited means – this is written before Iran got its nuke – are multiplied by factors that are internal to open societies. This makes the size of the easily denied peril into an expression of our weakness and not of their strength. Our limitation goes beyond energy dependency because it resides in our culture. In part, some of this inability to confront the new totalitarian threat comes from proven values. They have made our civilization rise and to expand its sway. However, against a radical Islamist enemy, tolerance rates as a weakness, while the assumption of his rationality is an error. Finally, the offer of compromise, intending to reassure it of our good intentions, is interpreted as demonstrated lack of resolve. In short, our proven, preferred and reasonable modus operandi to overcome conflicts, has muted into a disadvantage. The result of this shortcoming might be that the switch which make the red alarm lights blink, might not  be turned on in time.
 
5. We are imperiled by more than the discernible inability to react to dangers when these originate from across racial, cultural and religious dividing lines. According to an incapacitating shibboleth, all cultures and religions are good and equal. This makes the opposition to whatever that is justified in these terms difficult. A comparable weakness is also found regarding the protection of society and its innocent individual members from common criminals. The following is not reduced to cases when offenders can hide behind their special – such as in “ethnic” – background that confers victim status and thus immunity. The items to be brought up are all from today’s mixed news.
The first tidbit regards a person who, after a match, made another spectator into an invalid. He had prior convictions and got involved in a new case during his trial. Yet he was allowed to claim that his action’s consequences were a surprise to him. The sentence: one year in jail. Another case is that of two hooligans who beat someone and put his unconscious body across the railroad tracks. Sentence: 75 days of public service work.
Then there is the deed of a young man who served four years for attempted murder. Upon his release he slaughtered a woman. His explanation: he liked to be in jail.
Lastly, there is the, in Europe famous, Fritzl-trial. The accused kept his daughter in a basement dungeon for 24 years. During that time, he fathered her seven children. One he let die and disposed of the body. Fritzl will get life for a long list of offenses. In practice that means that after fifteen years he might be freed. You see, as his defense put it “he is not a monster”. Wherever you live, you could add copiously to the list. In view of the pattern consisting of major crimes and minor sentences, the conclusion might be that the system, erected to protect society, is not working. The reason: asocial acts are judged by the criteria of our political culture’s distorted derivates. The upshot is to the advantage of those who reject this culture. Putting ideology before the facts might represent noble sentiments and abstract fairness but the outcome misses reality.
 
6. The economy. The enthusiasm expressed in votes Obama received at home and the adulation abroad could, at least so far, not be converted into the confidence of the consuming public, investors and lenders. Do people not put their money where their mouth is? There is, however, a non-partisan reason to hope that Obama’s policies will soon show an effect. The delay between intervention and the restoration of trust results in the expansion of the future’s national debts -the plural is used because abroad, too, comparable policies are the “craze-of the-day”. Furthermore, the longer it takes until the eggs now laid hatch, the higher will be the resulting rate of inflation.
 
7. A typical item on the agenda of Europe’s Left is that immigrants – whether legal or illegal – should get the right to vote in local elections. There is more to this than principle. The explanation lies in a pecuniary advantage in the field of political capital building. Those persons with a “migration background” that are neither real refugees nor part of the migration of the “qualified seeking better opportunities”, are suitable cannon fodder on the battle field of elections. This element is attracted by the free lunches the welfare state serves. Already ancient Rome had to learn that this mass willingly pulls any political cart whose coachman promises to scatter goodies. In time this might teach us that, welfare, where misapplied, is not only an economic threat but also mutes into a political menace.