Stupid Left Tricks

WHICH IS WORSE? To have journalists jump down your throat every time you say something foolish? Or is it to have journalists politely ignore your stupidity?

Whenever TV evangelist Pat Robertson says something foolish, it gets on the nightly TV news, and we understand from the reporter’s tone of voice that this time preacher Pat has really demonstrated that he has got a screw loose.

But when a lefty does something stupid, we don’t get the same reaction.

For the last week French students have been rioting because the government wants to take a small step away from the policy of lifetime employment. The government wants to allow employers to fire employees under 26 during their first two years of employment without giving a reason. In the Anglo-Saxon countries this is called employment at will. But the French students are livid at losing the protections that they have not yet obtained. And so, writes Mathieu von Rohr in Der Spiegel “It's youth against the establishment.” But socialists are on the side of the students.

Ségolène Royal, the left wing's likely presidential contender, announced that employers in her départements would no longer receive government funding if they signed what she called "cheap contracts."

OK. A century ago you could still have argued that without protection the workers would be shockingly exploited by the bosses. But not now. We now have 200 years of capitalism and we know that the workers, especially well-educated students at the university, are not helpless. And we know that a rigid labor market, such as the one in France, is a labor market that doesn’t create jobs. Rigidity leads to stagnation; flexibility leads to prosperity.

If French students have not learned this, then someone has been hiding the truth from them.

Then there’s the stupidity going on in South America, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez playing the cacique and distributing low-cost heating oil to left-wing groups all over the Americas. According to Jorge Rueda from the Associated Press “Venezuela agreed Monday to sell fuel oil under preferential terms to an El Salvador association created by a group of leftist mayors.” This is similar to a program he has set up to send low-cost heating oil to the poor in the United States. And while he was at it Chavez lashed out at free trade, using

Monday's signing occasion to criticize U.S.-backed free trade agreements such as the one El Salvador joined March 1.

"They're making deals with the devil, the devil himself," Chavez said.

It’s a pity that when lefties say things like that nobody in the media responds in with lofty scorn. Because we know, as well as we know anything, that the road to prosperity is paved with free trade, low taxes, secure property rights, and an absolute minimum of special subsidies.

At least Pat Robertson gets to hear it when he says something stupid.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems… No more rules, no more models… Genius conjures up rather than learns… ” —Victor Hugo
César Graña, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

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