Progressivism

While Democratic Socialism is the darling of the political left, all forms of socialism have come from the brutal model first imposed upon Russia in 1917.

Ours in an age when people panic, sometimes for good reasons but often for bad. Governments benefit from panicked citizenry, which is why we always should question those political decisions that can turn our lives upside down.

In the name of fighting income inequality, pundits in the UK and US are calling for wealth taxes as magic bullets that will restore an imaginary state of income equality that never existed in the first place. It is time to abandon this idea for good.

When people speak of “social justice,” they are not speaking of justice in any historical form but rather an imaginary state of affairs in which the state enforces a progressive view of equality. F.A. Hayek wrote that “social justice” is “wholly devoid of meaning or content.”

When intellectuals and political elites call for equality, they usually mean creating social conditions that are make believe at best and harmful at worst. Their latest hustle is “equity,” which means the state should guarantee equal outcomes for everyone.

The California Bullet Train has become the Eternal Project That Won‘t Go Away no matter how big a failure it has become. Political inertia is a powerful force and California politicians have used it to deceive voters and taxpayers, who will face a reckoning.

When modern progressives claim to support equity, what they really mean is the confiscation of wealth and transferal of private property to politically-favored groups. These policies have a sorry history from Reconstruction and continued through the 20th century communist regimes.

Prophetic Statesmanship is worth reading as an example of the misplaced ingenuity with which intelligent scholars can defend ridiculous views. Efforts to unify Americans in the worship of the godlike Abraham Lincoln cannot succeed.

The covid-19 pandemic gave rise to widespread lockdowns and some of the greatest peacetime infringements on personal liberties in history.

From Paul Ehrlich to Bill Gates, prominent Americans have forecast doom through “overpopulation.” Although the Great Population Disaster has never occurred, that does not discourage the usual suspects from crying wolf.