George Handlery about the week that was. From autocracy to democracy and through socialism back to dictatorship. Chauvinism can make heroes out of murderers. Virtue and the people’s dictatorship. The revised truth of malevolent systems. Visions, lies and servitude. The Lehman collapse and kindergarten stuff. About Sotomayor, Ricci and well sounding nonsense.
 
1. Women in Black. On July 11, this organization went on the street. Its relatives were slaughtered in Srebrenica when Yugoslavia dissolved. The action commemorated what is with some accuracy called the greatest mass murder of post-war Europe. In Belgrade, and this is the “good news”, Serbian civil rights organizations supported the march that memorialized the victims of extremists that claimed to have acted in behalf of Serbs. The onlookers cursed the marchers and the Moslem victims. Add loud approval of Mladic and Karadzic. Srebrenica’s victims should be remembered, while the sufferers of other massacres, whose memory is (PC!) suppressed, should not be forgotten. Nor shall we ignore that, until crimes can be converted into heroism and the victims into vermin not deserving to live, there will be no peace.
 
2. Historically the state, more precisely those that acted in its behalf, was seen as the enemy of an “order of freedom”. Then the idea of a democratic state arose. It was to maintain an order built on the consent of the governed operating through institutions under the scrutiny of the sovereign people. In time, the idea arose that the state is to reallocate wealth according to principles articulated by a morally qualified elite. With this, claiming benefits for all, the circle that began with a too powerful state, closed. The state that is able to interfere in wealth creation and property rights is given power over all activities – and their fruits. The upshot is not equality – if we equate equality with justice. We wind up with the tyranny of the “allocator” who always favors himself. Ultimately, we also get less to distribute – therefore less wealth in absolute terms. Severing the connection between merit measured by performance and “having” has a high price. At the same time, mindlessly fusing economic and political power will round out the latter beyond the limits of democratic control.
 
3. All forms of collectivism share an assumption. Man, if not already perfect, is perfectible to purity. To raise man to his potential, directives serve the purpose of sandpaper when applied to rough wood. The moral education of man with the help of government power represses his nature-given inherited habits and replaces these with what are ultimately to become voluntarily lived virtues. These historically reoccurring assumptions betray that such systems of tutelage are justified by the moral claim of those who provide the “guidance” leading out of the state of nature into the state of virtue. The implied liberation from what “is” in favor of what is deemed possible. The method an its goals are democratic only to a limited degree. This limitation assumes momentary reluctance, the overcoming of which is justified by future consent. On the way to achieving this approval, the principle “with you if possible, against you until necessary” applies. The resulting system is a dictatorship in the name of a people to come. The elect administer it. It is said to see beyond what average human appetite covets at present. This function entrusted to the scribes explains the attraction of such systems to “administrationists” and educationalists.
 
4. Not knowing history is dangerous. Not because one might be labeled as a yahoo by the educated. Nor is the main problem that ignorance leaves parts of the collective record in the dark causing the uninformed opt for bankrupt remedies. The problem is that the discussion of most contemporary problems involves topics that are historical. Current conditions are the product of previous choices. The peril is that the blanc pages of the record can be filled with a re-written past. This corrected truth provides malevolent systems with a justification for what they intend to do and what they have already committed. Through this, the “wrong history” becomes the hand-maiden of modern systems in a way that makes them worse than the ignored original and now repeated condition ever was.
 
5. The falsified human record is of fundamental importance to totalitarian systems. Totalitarians have the vision of a perfect that is problem-free, order that is to unfold in the future. The striving of the enlightened that grasp the truth before its sun dawns for all, wish to accelerate the process that is predestined to become reality. Such future-oriented theories and their attached movements resort to a re-interpretation of the human experience prior to the moment we call the present. This analysis is to demonstrate that the vision is makeable and even demanded by the logical interrelationship discovered between past events. History being the product of past choices, it is a tenable claim that these choices were made under conditions that were shaped in the pursuit of previous preferences. Such picks might even have been the result of lucid extrapolations. However, these evaluations have not been fully rational in the sense of the natural sciences. The data used has been partial, its evaluation skewed by the situation of the decision makers, and they involved a future laden with factors that could not be fully anticipated. If we accept the foregoing then, it can be argued that those who opted for futures in the past and made thereby history, had equally valid alternative choices. Therefore, whatever happened did not “have” to take place. (Both China and Spain/Portugal had fleets to “discover” the world. The Chinese did not pursue their chance. The Iberians did. Neither had to make his choice.) Totalitarian history imposes an artificial “order” on a process characterized by such “accidents”. This gives the past, analogously to a riverbed, a purpose that predestines the movement to the “sea”. The implied “inevitability” is a weapon in the armory of totalitarian propaganda. It suggests that the end score of the game already stands. Therefore, even in the case of those disapproving, resistance is futile and submission a necessity.
 
6. Some might not have noticed. A significant case is unfolding. Earlier the US’ government seemed to have settled with the UBS – the Swiss bank which is the word’s largest wealth manager. This happened once the bank paid a deserved 700 million fine for having violated its own statutes, Swiss law and US law. Surprisingly, the bank is again subject to litigation. The IRS demands the release of data on about 52000 unnamed clients it guesses to be American tax subjects. (Most of these accounts have been – as in the writer’s case – properly reported to the IRS.) This is a “John Doe” summons. It is based on vague suspicions and is made without names or of a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. The bank resists and it has now the help of its government. The UBS has a 780 billion investment made in behalf of its global clients in the US. It is not discussed openly that there is a threat to freeze these funds. Therefore, the bank feels extorted. It is generally assumed that Washington has plans with the case. Other banks will share the UBS’ fate once the precedence stands. This suggests that strategies will be developed to avoid future shakedowns. The effort to avoid being taken hostage leads to incrementally liquidated American holdings and reduced (vitally needed) foreign investment in her economy. (N.B. The newest data at the time of submission suggests that this process might have started.) The impact on employment, the dollar and the outflow of capital will be considerable. The damage will be much larger than the immediate gains from accessing a few nest eggs stashed away by fearful “US persons”. An immediate ramification is that, if the UBS with its 2100 billions is made to totter, a global economic crisis will be unleashed. The crash will make the Leman collapse look like kindergarten stuff.
 
7. Frank Ricci is a litigant Sotomayor found against. Recently his claim was upheld by the Supremes. The firefighter is to be heard by the committee that decides Sotomayor’s qualifications to join the Supreme Court. The candidate’s defenders point out that earlier, Ricci, who suffers from dyslexia, has successfully sued to be hired as a fireman. His detractors claim that his second suit –and therefore Ricci’s current opposition to Sotomayor – is inconsistent with the position he took in his original complaint. This is logical nonsense even if it sounds confusingly good. In his first suit, Mr. Ricci demanded to be hired regardless of a handicap not directly related to future performance. In the second appeal, he and his fellows sued asking that, on the basis of their test scores, they be promoted. They made their claim regardless of lacking recognized handicaps or membership in groups that receive preferential treatment if basically qualified. Mr. Ricci’s claims are consistent with each other. In one instance, the litigant demanded that appointments should show leniency for minor deficiencies that do not relate to job-performance. In the second suit Mr. Ricci alleges that the lack of what is officially recognized as a disadvantage – belonging to a protected minority – should not disqualify a candidate with proven competence for (an otherwise uncontested) promotion.