Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Socialists are Stupid, Crazy, or Evil

Yes, those are harsh words in the title.  I'm not being ironic.  I'm not exaggerating to make a point.  I mean what I wrote quite sincerely and perfectly literally, and I can back up my assertion with historical facts.

First, I need to offer my view of history.  I view history not as a boring collection of names, places and dates, but as a laboratory where ideas are tried and from which the results of those ideas can be analyzed.  If a social idea is proposed, it's wise to look back at history and see where similar ideas have been tried in the past (they almost ALWAYS have been tried) and see what the results were.  Those results can often be counter-intuitive.

Far from being workers paradises, Socialist nations have to build walls around themselves in order to keep their own people from fleeing to other places.  Socialist governments have killed more people, their own citizens, in the 20th century than all the wars we fought during that time.  An estimated 12 million people were killed by the Nazis (National Socialist Party), 20 million by Stalin in the Soviet Union, 50 million by Mao and his successors in China, and more untold millions in Cambodia, Korea, Viet Nam, Cuba, etc.  With such a horrific track record, how can anyone see Socialism as a viable philosophy?  Well, I've identified a few different types of people who embrace this failed idea:

1) Some people are completely unaware of the results of prior attempts to bring about Socialist societies.  It looks good on paper, it looks FAIR.  They never take a look back in history to other places where it's been attempted to see how they worked out.  They never see the abject misery and outright horror brought about by Socialism.  It looks good in theory, so it must work in practice, right?  Well, as they say, in theory there's no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is.  These are the people who insist that Cuba is a wonderful place to live, despite the remains of rafts on the beaches of Florida or the untold numbers of Cubans who didn't survive that trip.  For those who would claim that some of these people are merely ignorant and not stupid, I'd offer that the evidence is freely available and totally conclusive.  If you're old enough to vote or order a glass of wine in a restaurant and haven't availed yourself of that evidence you're only ignorant because you're too stupid to become educated.  I repeat, stupid.

2) Some people actually DO see the history of Socialism's failure, but they conclude that it simply has never been attempted properly.  They think the problem is with the implementation, not with the underlying philosophy.  They completely mis-understand human nature, that such a society can't work.  People will always look out for their own interests, they'll always take the path of least resistance, and they won't labor for that which doesn't provide benefit.  These believers will tell you it WOULD work if only the RIGHT people were given the job of making it happen.  (Kevin at The Smallest Minority refers to this concept as "Do it Again, Only Harder!")  Just because it's failed every other time it's been tried doesn't mean it'll fail this time, right?  Albert Einstein's definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.  Crazy.

3) This next group of Socialism's supporters is vile.  They see the human wreckage left behind by prior attempts.  They see that the vast majority of people living in a Socialist society exist in a state of misery, and that many people will be labeled as "enemies of the state" and incarcerated or outright murdered.  They also note that for the elite, the higher ups, the party aparatchiks.life is pretty good.  Instead of being one of the many miserable ones, they expect to be among the few well-off ones.  Instead of being murdered, they expect to carry out the ordered the murder at least, or at best to be the one who does the ordering.  Down that road lies the worst excesses of depravity.  If that's not evil, I don't know what is.

4) Then there are the people who believe humans just haven't evolved far enough to be good Socialists, but that we will.  They believe that human nature is progressing to a state where everyone will naturally work to the best of his ability and give the produce of their labor to those with the greatest need.  They believe, in that Utopian society, that no one will be lazy, no one will be greedy, no one will do less work than they can or take more than they need.  Perhaps there are some people with this viewpoint who are willing to sit back and let nature take its course in human evolution, believing that eventually we'll reach that higher plane of existence, but I've never met such a person (who I would classify as stupid).  Most such true believers in Socialism are more than willing to hasten the process of evolution by eliminating people who don't wish to be Socialists.  Oh, they would never come out and admit that they'd like to see guillotines set up in the town square.  They use such innocuous terms as "re-education" or "the greater good" or "you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs".  Whatever euphemism they choose, the result is the same, the gulag, the concentration camp, the killing field.  The truly disgusting thing is that these people can act with clear consciences, they're trying to bring about Heaven on Earth, and if a few people have to experience a living Hell to do so, well, that's just the price you pay.

I've never met a Socialist (or Communist) who didn't fit one of these categories, and I expect I never will.  This is why I have such a passionate hatred for Socialism.  It's a philosophy that belongs in the trash bin of history, but because there's a steady supply of people who are either stupid, crazy or evil it keeps being put forth as a viable system of government.  It's the job of the intelligent, sane and good to keep defeating it every time it reappears.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Atlas Shrugged - Part I

My wife and I saw the movie "Atlas Shrugged - Part I", the weekend it opened.  I thought I'd offer a review.

I need to make a couple points first.  I've read the book twice in the last few years.  It's a sometimes difficult book to read, Ms. Rand seriously needed an editor.  I'm also not a big fan of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, I believe it's another of those concepts that looks better on paper than it works in reality, just like Socialism, Communism, and Utopianism.  Still, I think she has some valid points to make.

Since I'm sure a few of my loyal readers haven't read the book, let me offer a synopsis.  Atlas Shrugged (the book) takes place in the indeterminate future, the movie is actually set in 2016.  The United States, along with the rest of the world, is in the throes of a recession.  There are a few companies that are still profitable, chief among these are Taggart Transcontinental (the largest railroad in the nation.  The CEO is James Taggart but the company is really run by the Operating Vice President, his sister Dagney.), Wyatt Oil (an oil company drilling previously untapped reserves in Colorado, operated by Ellis Wyatt) and Rearden Steel (a steel company in Pennsylvania, which is successful mostly because the company owns its own iron and coal mines, so it's not at the mercy of any other company to supply the raw materials it needs.  The company is run by Henry "Hank" Rearden, who has also developed a new metal that's cheaper and stronger than steel.).  These successful companies attract, in Rand's words, moochers and looters, meaning those people who believe they have a right to the fruits of success because they need them, and those who will just take those fruits, respectively.  The government, supported by the less-competent executives of less-successful companies, passes legislation to take from the successful companies because it isn't fair that some companies are successful while others aren't.  In the background, numerous successful people are just disappearing, quitting their jobs or abandoning their companies, never to be heard from again.  People repeatedly ask "Who is John Galt."

The critics have been nearly universal in their hatred of the movie.  Many of their criticisms stem from the attempt to bring a book about the future that was written in 1957 to the screen.  Ayn Rand didn't anticipate extensive air travel, computers, cell phones, or a whole host of other technological marvels that are everyday tools of the people sitting in the theaters fifty years later.  There was some attempt to explain or incorporate those technologies into the movie, and I thought they were mostly effective.  As an example, very near the beginning of the movie we overhear a news report stating that, due to turmoil in the Middle East, gasoline has reached $37.50 per gallon, meaning that it's just too expensive to drive or fly, so trains were the most cost effective method of travelling long distances.

So, on to the review.  I liked it.  I didn't LOVE it, but I liked it.  I thought the acting could have been better, but the characters were fairly convincing, or at least instantly recognizable from the characters in the book.  There were some things left out, which given my aforementioned belief that Ms Rand needed the services of a good editor is a good thing.  There were places where a LITTLE more detail would have gone well to explain things to a person, like my wife, who's never read the book, but all in all I think the movie did a good job.

Better acting might have elevated a decent movie to a good one.  The reason for this is two-fold, one is the budget, and the other is that the vast majority of Hollywood actors wouldn't have touched this movie with a ten foot pole.  Still, I would have loved to have seen, say,  Gary Sinise as Hank Rearden.  I honestly don't know what current actress could have played Dagney Taggart though.  Few actresses can combine youth and beauty with the hard-as-nails (nails made of Rearden Metal no less) toughness her character requires.  Taylor Schilling did about as good a job as anyone could have and probably better than most Hollywood A-list actresses would have.  (Maybe there's a discussion of the current crop of young actresses in a future blog post?)

All in all it's a movie that's worth seeing, and I hope they make enough money on it to go forward with parts two and three.  While, as I said above, I have some problems with Objectivism, I think the warnings about the impact of certain policies is one that needs to be voiced. 

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Communal Guilt

There's a video making its way around the Internet called "Dear Woman" by a group of human males calling themselves "Conscious Men".  I won't link to it, but you'll find it if you want to.  I'll admit that I haven't watched the entire video, doing so requires a stronger stomach than I possess, but the upshot of the video is a couple of (alleged) men apologizing to women for all the mean and nasty things done to women by men throughout history.

The whole thing reminds me of a conversation I had with a former girlfriend (herself a Women's Studies major), where she asked me if I ever felt guilty for the fact that men rape women.  I told her, most emphatically, that I do not feel guilty, because I personally have never raped a woman.  I've never hit a woman.  I have, to the best of my ability, attempted to treat women with the respect they deserve.  I would, in fact, intervene to defend any woman I saw undergoing such an attack.

The thing that sticks in my craw about this is the concept of communal guilt, the idea that an individual belonging to a group is to blame for all the misdeeds of any other individual member of that same group.  Therefore all men should feel guilty for the crime of rape committed by other men.  This despite the fact that most men are not rapists.  All Christians are responsible for the Crusades, despite the fact that the last Crusade ended hundreds of years before anyone currently alive was born.  All whites should feel guilty about slavery, despite the fact that no one currently alive either owned, or was, a slave and that indeed for most of us our ancestors weren't even in the United States when slavery was abolished (personally, three of my four grandparents came to this country fifty years after the Civil War, the fourth grew up in North Dakota and her ancestors fought on the Union side).

I accept no guilt for actions I personally did not perform.  I do not apologize for the actions of others.  No one has the right to apologize on my behalf.  I reserve the right to apologize for my own, and only my own, misdeeds.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

My Favorite Movies

Here are some of my favorites movies, in no particular order (well, except for the first):

Secondhand Lions - Probably my favorite movie of all time, and vastly under-rated. Two old men (played by Michael Caine and Robert Duvall, how can it NOT be great?) have their niece's son (Haley Joel Osment) dropped off on them for a while. At first the men don't like the boy and the feeling is mutual, but they grow on each other. The boy brings a new life, and reason for living, to the old men, the men help the boy grow up to be a fine man. The plot revolves around the men's life story, a story that has obviously grown better with time and telling but still contains essential truths. The best line in the movie (spoken by Hub, Duvall's character): "Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in. "

Dead Poet's Society - English teacher John Keating (Robin Williams) at an exclusive all-boys school instills a love of poetry and life into his charges, often going against the grain of the establishment. We learn about Mr. Keating's personality when he has one of the students read the introduction to the poetry textbook which claims that you can determine the quality of a poem by plotting (literally, on an X-Y axis) the technical perfection of the poem against the importance of the poem's objective. Mr Keating responds with one word, "Excrement", and has the boys tear the introduction from their textbooks. My favorite quote: "We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."

The Sand Pebbles - A China sailor named Jake Holman (Steve McQueen) befriends a missionary English teacher named Shirley Eckert (a very, very young Candice Bergen) in China during the Boxer Rebellion. Holman is more comfortable around his engines than his fellow sailors who consider him bad luck. As their friendship grows, so do the tensions between the American navy and the Chinese Nationalists. My favorite scene happens when Jake and Shirley meet on a ferry, Shirley starts talking to Jake (probably because they're the only two English speakers on the boat) and Jake tells her "Maybe you don't know, but nice white girls don't talk to China sailors."

The Longest Day - I don't think you could pack more star power into one movie with a shoehorn. John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, the cast reads as a Who's Who of Hollywood in 1962. It's arguably the greatest war movie ever made, about (inarguably) the greatest military achievement ever, the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. At the turning point on Omaha Beach Brigadier General Norman Cota (Robert Mitchum) tells his men "Only two types of people are gonna stay on this beach, those who are already dead and those that are gonna die. Now get off your butts."

Contact - A hard headed astronomer (Jodi Foster), in charge of the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) has contact with an alien life-form. The problem is that she has no proof beyond her own experience of it, a level of proof she's repeatedly rejected in the past when dealing with people of faith. Best quote (spoken by the alien): "You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other. "

Unforgiven - An aging gunslinger (Clint Eastwood) who spends his days mourning his wife and trying to raise his two children gets a chance to make some money by killing a cowboy who cut up a prostitute's face. He and his friend (Morgan Freeman) deal with the morality of their mission and the demons that haunt their own pasts. Best line: " I ain't like that no more. I ain't the same, Ned. Claudia, she straightened me up, cleared me of drinkin' whiskey and all. Just 'cause we're goin' on this killing, that don't mean I'm gonna go back to bein' the way I was. I just need the money, get a new start for them youngsters."

Gran Torino - Another Clint Eastwood movie. A retired auto worker, Korean War vet, and widower has a family of Chinese immigrants move in next door. Despite his prejudices, he finds that they have a lot in common. He takes a young man under his wing, teaches him how to fix things, helps him get a job, and helps steer him away from a local gang. Along the way he's battling his own demons. One of my favorite lines (at least of those that don't contain profanity)" "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone."

Iron Man - Yeah, I know, it's a comic-book movie. It's also about a unique superhero. He wasn't born a superhero like Superman, he didn't become on by accident like Spiderman, he became one via his own effort and genius. Here's a story of a man with few redeeming qualities who has his eyes forceably opened to what he'd previously ignored and decides to do something about it. Favorite line: "Well, Ms. Brown. It's an imperfect world, but it's the only one we got. I guarantee you the day weapons are no longer needed to keep the peace, I'll start making bricks and beams for baby hospitals."

Zulu - Based on the story of a British regiment at Rourke's Drift in Natal, the story revolves around two Lieutenants, Chard of the Engineers who is only in the area to build a bridge, and Bromhead (played by Michael Caine) who's from a military family (he refers to his grandfather as "The General"). They lead a 140 man force against 4,000 Zulu warriors who are attacking their outpost. Despite the enormous odds, they are determined to follow their orders to stand fast. It's a story of courage, determination, and sheer guts. As an aside, seven Victoria's Crosses (Britain's highest military honor for bravery) were awarded, the most ever awarded in one action to one regiment. Just one of many great lines: "A prayer's as good as bayonet on a day like this."

The Princess Bride - A sick boy gets a visit from his grandfather, who reads him a book that he read to the boy's father when he was sick. The story revolves around the beautiful Princess Buttercup, her farmboy true love Wesley, and the evil Prince Humperdink who's determined to have Buttercup for his bride. There are probably more great one-liners in this movie than any other I've ever seen, but my favorite has got to be "Life IS pain Princess. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something."

Star Wars (Original Trilogy) - A rag-tag group of rebels takes on the evil Empire. It takes place in a galaxy far far away, or does it? Action abounds, Harrison Ford's Han Solo hits just the right mix of scoundrel and boyish charm, and all in the days when special effects were done with models. See the original theatrical releases, not the "updated" ones. If Han shoots first you've got the right one. Don't waste your time with the three pre-quels. Favorite line: "Do. Or do not. There is no try."

300 - 300 Spartans and a few hundred other Greek warriors meet thousands of Persians at Thermopylae. They know they can't win, but they hope to buy enough time to organize a defense. It's classic good vs evil, Western civilization against barbarism. Just one of many great lines: "The world will know that free men stood against a tyrant, that few stood against many, and before this battle was over, even a god-king can bleed."

Open Range - Aging free-grazer Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall) and his hired cowhand Charley Waite (Kevin Costner) meet up with rancher Denton Baxter and his crooked Sheriff. One of their friends is killed, another wounded, and the two free-grazers decide to even the score. This movie contains one of the best Western gunfights ever filmed. One of many great lines, spoken by Charley Waite: "Well you may not know this, but there's things that gnaw at a man worse than dying."

Feel free to comment on these movies, or any others!