More Spengler

Liberalism, in its German form, has always stood for mental sterility, for the ignorance and incomprehension of historical necessities. It has meant the inability to cooperate with others or to make sacrifices for others. Its position has always been one of entirely negative criticism, though not as an expression of an indomitable will to change society—as manifested by Bebel’s Socialists—but simply out of the desire to "be different." While our liberals have never been at a loss for "standpoints" to adopt, they have lacked the inner vitality and discipline, the confidence and purposeful vigor that are so characteristic of the English form of liberalism.

The meaning of socialism is that life is dominated not by the contrast of rich and poor but by rank as determined by achievement and ability. That is our kind of freedom: freedom from the economic capriciousness of the individual. My fervent hope is that no one will remain hidden who was born with the ability to command, and that no one is given the responsibility for commanding who lacks the inborn talent for doing so. Socialism means ability, not desire. Not the quality of intentions but the quality of accomplishments is decisive. I turn to our youth. I call upon all who have marrow in their bones and blood in their veins. Train yourselves! Become men! We need no more ideologists, no more chatter about Bildung and cosmopolitanism and Germany’s intellectual mission. We need hardness, we need a courageous skepticism, we need a class of socialistic mastertypes. Once again: Socialism means power, power, and more power. Thoughts and schemes are nothing without power. The path to power has already been mapped: the valuable elements of German labor in union with the best representatives of the Old Prussian state idea, both groups determined to build a strictly socialist state to democratize our nation in the Prussian manner; both forged into a unit by the same sense of duty, by the awareness of a great obligation, by the will to obey in order to rule, to die in order to win, by the strength to make immense sacrifices in order to accomplish what we were born for, what we are, what could not be without us. We are socialists. Let us hope that it will not have been in vain.

What must daily life under totalitarian rule have been like?

Ever wonder what it must have been like to live in Fascist Italy, Maoist China, Falangist Spain, or even Oceania? I've read some histories, memoirs, seen films of the period, and I've got some notion.

For instance, the state would constantly be telling you what was best for you, where your interest lay, what you should support. There would always be the nagging notion in the back of your mind that something about the message was being left out, that there was an hidden agenda, that some other interest were being served.

The effort to control the thoughts of the people would have to be unceasing. Every medium would be used: radio, television, newspapers. Huge rallies would be held. The issue would never be discussed, only boosted. Film stars would stand next to leaders endorsing this benevolent program. Sports stars would make visits to schools to tell your children to support the measure. Businessmen would harangue you about how this or that measure was absolutely necessary for continued prosperity. Straw-man arguments would be set up and demolished in sham debates. Slogans would be repeated until they numbed the ears.

Posters would appear overnight in a coördinated campaign. A new symbol would suddenly be everywhere. On each street, on ever block, on each lamp-post.

There would simply be no getting away from it.

Mrs. Peabody: Always Correct

On March 30, 1964, a mixed group of Whites and Negroes was arrested by Saint John County sheriff L.O. Davis at a sit-in demonstration at the Ponce De Leon Motel, in St. Augustine, Florida. When they were taken off for booking, the negro women looked to Catherine Twine, a postman's wife, for leadership, but she thought to defer to one of the Northern white women who had come down especially for the demonstration. She was quite impressed by one elderly woman, every inch the aristocrat in her sensible shoes and pale pink suit, and Mrs. Twine remarked, "My — but you look just like Mrs. Elanor Roosevelt."

Taking this as a complement, the woman nodded, "We're cousins."

The woman was Mary Parkman Peabody, wife of retired Episcopal Bishop of New York, the Rev. Malcolm Peabody, and 72-year old mother of Massachusetts Governor Endicott Peabody. Upon being arrested, she became an instant celebrity. When CBS offered to make her bail in order to get an exclusive interview with her, she refused, saying, "I'd rather stay in jail with my new friends."

Where are the aristocrats of today?

Better Days Ahead

In 1940, in response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless America", which Guthrie considered unrealistic and complacent, Woody Guthrie wrote "This Land Is Your Land." At the time he, along with Lee Hays and Pete Seeger were with the Almanac Singers, a group of folk singers who sang peace songs wherever they could, from Greenwich Village cafes to Northwest logger's camps.

Hays and Seeger later went on to considerable success in the late forties with the Weavers, before being black-listed in the early 1950's. Guthrie, whose health began deteriorating in the late 1940's, never enjoyed anything like the fame or success of the Weavers.

In 1944, Guthrie met Moses "Moe" Asch of Folkways Records, for whom he recorded "This Land Is Your Land." It wasn't until the folk revival of the late 1950's however, that this recording gained any notice. Pretty soon the song became a standard with folk singers and was even put into music books for school children to sing. Hearing this on his death bed, in the mid-1960's, Guthrie told his son Arlo to make sure that all of the lyrics were sung, "even the Communist lyrics."

Here are the lyrics. The "Communist lyrics" are highlighted in red:

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND
words and music by Woody Guthrie

Chorus:
This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

Chorus

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Chorus

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

Chorus (2x)

When I was a child we sang this song in grade school. We didn't sing the Communist lyrics. (Though sometimes we did sing: "I saw baloney, a big salami …") I was in my early thirties before I even found out about the Communist lyrics.

On 18 January 2009 song was sung by Pete Seeger, and his grandson, Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, at We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial.



The song was restored to the original lyrics for this performance at Pete Seeger's request.

A Willful Mis-Stating of the Issues

A Washington Times article by Jeffrey T. Kuhner, "A socialist America?" was recently re-printed in the Wanderer. There were so many routine distortions that I thought it would be worthwhile to debunk a few of them, as I have often heard many of my Catholic friends buying into many of these deceptions.

• "An Obama presidency will [transform] our country into a socialist state."

This is just blather. I am a socialist, I know what socialism is, and a fundamentally bourgeois, corporate dominated state that throws a few meager benefits to the workers is not socialism! When most workers are unionized, when Social Security is turned into a genuinely equitable pension system, when great fortunes are not allowed to be passed down from generation to generation of rentier — then we might be close to socialism! Until then, speaking of “socialism” is just a lot of reactionary name-calling.

• "Mr. Obama will focus immediately on passing universal health care … [shifting] nearly 50 million Americans from private coverage to government-run care …"

No one is calling for “government-run care.” Under no plan that I have heard would the government own hospitals, run clinics, and be the sole employer of doctors. The proper analogy here is not to the government run Post Office, but to a simple government disbursement of funds to private providers. And government is good at that: the Social Security Administration, for instance, administers millions of individual accounts at a cost of less than 1% of the funds handled, far less than any investment firm charges.

• "The program's vast size and immense cost will lead to rising taxes …"

Okay, if we now pay about 16% of our GDP for health, and going to a single-payer system brings our costs in line with Europe, where they all have such systems and they cost about 8-10% of GDP, then we can expect to save about 6% of our GDP that is now wasted on health administration, legal fees, billing costs, etc,. That's right: the cost of health care will come down!

So, perhaps your taxes will go up somewhat, but your health care premiums would drop to nothing. Right now I pay about $600- a month to insure myself and my employees, and I probably pay half that much more on stuff that isn’t covered by my plan. You would have to more than double my income tax before single-payer insurance would cost me more.

• "The program's vast size and immense cost will lead to … the rationing of services.

Oh, and services aren’t rationed now?

When I had bronchitis last winter, I knew my health insurance wouldn’t cover it (deductible, you know), so I stayed away from the doctor for five months hoping it would clear up on its own. Tell me that isn’t rationing?

When my wisdom teeth began to ache from time-to-time in my mid-twenties I couldn’t afford to have them taken out. I had to wait until my mid-thirties, when they were fully impacted, and I needed surgery, which was covered, before they were taken out. Tell me that isn’t rationing?

Oh, we have rationing now, and, until we have an infinite supply of health care, we will continue to have rationing. The question is: will we have rationing by need or by wealth?

• " America's social programs will resemble those of statist Europe; we will also resemble the Continent's anemic growth rates, lower productivity and higher unemployment. America's culture of entrepreneurialism and technological dynamism will degenerate into one characterized by economic dependency and social stagnation."

Gee — Japan has had all of those polices for decades and that hasn’t stopped them from having a dynamic economy.

And how about this? Wages have gone down 30% in America since 1972, while in Europe they have about doubled in that time frame. All of our “dynamic growth” in that time has gone to make a few people ever more grotesquely rich which, when you think about it, really isn’t any kind of growth worth having.

• "[Mr. Obama] vows to lift or eliminate the cap on payroll taxes, which funds Social Security and Medicare. Hence, a tax designed to maintain a pension insurance system will be used for the redistribution of wealth."

I hate that phrase “redistribution of wealth." It implies that there was some sort of Divinely Ordained and infinitely just original distribution of wealth, instead of an inherently flawed and corrupt market system that routinely rewards speculators, pornographers, and marketers pandering to our worst desires, while neglecting teachers, farmers, and innumerable others who actually contribute to the well being of society.

But, just in case you still balk at any form of “redistribution of wealth,” check out what Pope Pius said in Quadragesimo Anno:

“[It is the] function of government to adjust ownership to meet the needs of the public good.”

• "… to forge a new Democratic majority, felons will be given the right to vote, and the District of Columbia will be granted congressional representation - meaning more Democratic seats."

As opposed to, say, the way the Republicans routinely disenfranchised Florida voters who merely had the same name as felons? Or the Republican gerrymandering in the Southern states that routinely denies representation to white Democrats? Or the Diebold voting machines that routinely throw out votes for the Democratic ticket?

Now, I don’t really don’t feel strongly about the issue, but the idea that once a man has paid his debt to society he ought to regain the full rights of a citizen doesn’t strike me as unreasonable. Nor does it strike me as particularly fair that the Republican stronghold of Wyoming should get two senators while the District of Columbia, with at least a hundred thousand more residents, should not.

• "The Obama-Pelosi-Reid unholy alliance will complete the revolutionary project of the 1960s: a society stripped from its traditional Christian moorings."

Okay, who’s the churchgoer: Obama or McCain? Obama is a different kind of Democrat precisely because he is a believing Christian. I get sick of reactionaries calling anyone to the left of Ronald Regan (who wasn’t religious at all, if you will remember) “anti-Christian,” as if Martin Luther King, Eugene McCarthy, and Dorothy Day had never existed.

Sure Pelosi and Reid are largely secular, but is the bad religion of George W. Bush better? Is religion used to justify imperialism, genocide, and an erosion of our civil rights real piety, or is it a fraud? Sure, a lot of people on the left are totally secular — about as secular as those godless Libertarians!

• "Finally, his administration will consolidate a liberal Supreme Court and thus advance the leftist social agenda of abortion on demand …"

Wait, wait, wait! It was a Republican dominated court that put through Roe v. Wade! Only two of the last nine Republican nominees to the court have opposed it! Saying that Republican court nominees would be better on the life issue is criminally naive.

• " … the decriminalization of prostitution, the legalization of marijuana and euthanasia."

Oh, cut it out! No one’s talking about anything like that. This is just scare mongering of the worst possible sort.

Let’s give this man a chance, huh? Things have gone terribly wrong under Bush. We are engaged in an immoral war of imperialism, the economy is deep in depression, the distribution of wealth is almost at third-world imbalances, working-class income has been stagnant for three decades, our infrastructure is crumbling, or foreign debt is crushing, and our prestige in the world is at an all time low. Barack Obama is a bright young man who is not tied to the old ideas of sixties liberalism. Have you been listening to what he has been saying about the recent financial crisis? The man is talking sense and I feel the quality of government is going to improve almost immediately.

Cosmic Soviet Baby

On 8 June 1964 Valentina Tereshkova gave birth to a daughter, Elena Andrianovna Lenochka Nikolayeva-Tereshkova. Tereshkova, the first woman in space, was married to Cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev. Their daughter Elena is, to date, the only child born to parents who have both been to space.

American Failure

"In business, under the American system, each year the failures exceed the new successes by a very, very, very wide margin. In business, under the American system, hundreds of thousands more have failed, generation after generation, than the few who have succeeded. If we are to judge by the preponderance of individual successes over failures, or vice-versa, then the American system, business wise, is a record of steady, almost unrelieved failure. It has failure literally built into it."

— Ferdinand Lundberg,
"The Rich and the Super-Rich"