the protesters were peaceful, the only ones acting out with petty violence being loudly chastised by the crowd. The most belligerent participants by far were law enforcers, who responded to thrown bottles and civil disobedience with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Reflect that the original plan of the Occupy Wall Street movement was not to camp out in public parks, but to camp inside major buildings symbolic of capitalism in general and Wall Street in particular, planning to relive the sixties occupations of University Campus admin buildings that gave the extreme left total control of the campus. Recall that they repeatedly attempted to do so, and in every case swiftly got the heave ho from rentacops, security, and custodians, sometimes with a bit of pepper spray, but usually they swiftly retreated in the face of the firm and calm determination of the greatly outnumbered handful of rentacops, with very little fuss and drama.
And yet police somehow, strange to report, find it terribly difficult to remove these guys from a public park without great drama and spectacle.
Similarly, London is somehow strangely unable to clear out the tents of a Potemkin village occupation whose tents are empty at night. “Occupy Wall Street” are the state and police are the state.
LewRockwell.com and Bruce Majors are attempting to ally leftwards. It is pointless. There is no left. The left is the state and the state is the left. “Occupy Wall Street” are just astroturf puppets of the people who gave you the bailout.
The organization “Libertarian Republicans” are not libertarian. They think Governor Romneycare is Libertarian, and Herman Cain is not. Whosoever purports to ally with some supposedly small faction of the left, allies with the state. Although there are one hundred and one factions within the state, each struggling with each other, they are all within the state, none are outside the state. To ally with one, is to ally with the state, which is to ally with them all against the people.
According to “Libertarian Republicans”
For 2012, the choice for all Republicans, including Libertarian Republicans is now Mitt Romney
So if you are a libertarian, you supposedly must support Romneycare, the system on which Obamacare was based.
Whosoever allies with one leftist, allies with every single one, for all leftists, whoever much they quarrel with each other, are united to rule everyone else. Whosoever sees some good in “Occupy Wall Street”, somehow winds up seeing some good in bailouts and Obamacare. All leftists are one leftist, and whosoever allies with one of them, allies with all of them.
Whosoever discovers that there is some good in “Occupy Wall Street” because supposedly they oppose bailouts, will soon be found arguing that the sinfulness of bankers makes some bailouts regrettably necessary, and we must support Governor Romneycare for president because he is electable and Herman Cain is not.
This in part illustrates the conspiratorial nature of the left, with its innumerable front organizations, but it also illustrates the evil nature of consensus. Since the evil and the insane do not shift, consensus always winds up being fully dominated by the evil and the insane, so if you look for allies on a side dominated by consensus, you wind up as part of the echo chamber for the evil and the insane.
When we are in a society larger than the society of evolutionary adaptation, larger than the society of the ancestral environment, we automatically and irrationally overweight consensus, all of us, myself included, though I do so less than some.
People who overweight consensus less than others are disagreeable people by definition: They disagree. But nonetheless everyone errs in the direction of overweighting consensus and status, no one, not a one, errs by underweighting it, just as we always eat too much sugar and do not get enough exercise. Consensus in a large society always necessarily winds up dominated by the evil and the insane, since the insane will not shift, and the evil will conspiratorially manipulate the appearance of consensus, thus one should never believe anything because of consensus. If the main evidence for X is consensus, rather than primary evidence, X is probably a lie.
In the ancestral environment, topics of conversation were immediately empirical: (“Good fishing at those rocks when the tide is coming over them”), thus consensus was reliable. The less immediately empirical the facts in question, the more dangerous consensus. Thus in the modern environment, where facts tend to be third hand and elaborately processed, we tend to be excessively credulous towards consensus, just as we tend to eat too much sugar. When the consensus concerns status questions (“so and so is a racist”), it automatically is going to go into a positive feedback loop, automatically becoming ever more extreme, and ever less sane, creating an environment where madness is conformity to the good and the great, and sanity is deemed evil, and, worse than evil, low status.
Truman estimated that 25% of all American aid given to China was looted by Chiang’s family and their cronies.
The KMT got away with their larceny for a long time. But they couldn’t get away with it forever. Eventually, the suckers paying for it (the American people) wouldn’t have stood for it.
Because their daddies & granddaddies fleeced U.S. taxpayers instead of fighting communists, KMT descendants now own expensive property in downtown Manhattan. Nice work, if you can get it.
As compared to 100% of aid given to North Korea, Cuba and the PLO.
Seventy five percent getting to its intended purpose is extraordinarily good, far better than most recipients of US aid.
[…] “Occupy Wall Street” are just astroturf puppets of the people who gave you the bailout, and Jon Corzine is one of the people who gave you the bailout. […]
The power to co-opt presupposes the power to reward your allies and destroy your enemies. The Mises Institute may have many things going for it, but those are not among them. The Institute would have better luck throwing it’s weight around if it established a legal foundation and started suing people who violated liberty.
The judges are, however, pretty much the same people as you will find vandalizing property at an Occupy Wall Street protest, (they certainly live in the same sort of houses) thus such lawsuits are unlikely to succeed.
A suit need not prevail to be successful. The cost of defense alone can serve a salutary and deterrent effect.
That is only true when the judge is on the side of the accuser. On the basis of an accusation, they can put you through hell, or not. If you are accused, and your lawyer can put a word in the right ear, it all goes away. There are no required procedures, it is all optional.
That is why you always try to get a lawyer who went to the same law school as the judge or the prosecutor. Things go a lot easier when your lawyer went to the judge’s school, even if they went in very different years and never met in person, they are still linked through the same academic patronage networks.
And of course, most judges are in the same political patronage networks as the Occupy Wall Street mob, though the judges are close to the top, and most of the mob close to the bottom.
To his credit Chiang was almost the only one to see that during the 30s, Japan was the Manchus, i.e. a passing threat, but Mao´s army was Li Zicheng, i.e. the real problem. Still, what could he do? His own warlords rebelled when he tried to stamp Mao first. Chiang had the right vision, but he didnt have the power to enforce it.
I’m not claiming that the PRC would be at Taiwan levels of income had the KMT won. My only points are that: 1) the CCP was at least as corrupt as the KMT, and in fact the KMT very nearly won in 1949; Commie victory was not inevitable, regardless of what useful idiots in the U.S. thought, and 2China would have been much better off had Chiang won. No, Chaing was not any great humanitarian, but he would not have starved forty million people due to economic lunacy, shut down his country’s education system for a decade, and poured billions of dollars into promoting “revolution” that the country could not afford. Just sayin’…
“and in fact the KMT very nearly won in 1949”
That´s news to me
As for Jim´s points, I do wish the left was as inept in war as he says, but the Bolsheviks won the civil war, and the Chicoms did so too.
South Korea only started to develop after normalizing relations with Japan, i.e. getting Japanese tech for free. Before Park Chunghee SK was a shithole. He copied entirely Japan´s economic growth model. It worked.
Hong Kong of course had the goddamn United Kingdom behind it. Can we go beyond right/left and see the particulars?
I know Mao probably wouldnt have won without the US foreign service backstabbing of Chiang. And China would have been spared Mao´s madness. But the KMT wasn´t what it became in Taiwan. Its not that Chiang himself was evil or a crook. But he didn´t control the other warlords. Some of which were evil crooks. Some even made friends with the Commies. Should tell you something about moral equivalence.
My contention that the KMT almost won in 1949 is based on Jung Chen’s biography of Mao, and Edgar O’Ballance’s 1960’s book, “The Red Army Of China”. Certainly, until Marshall’s cease-fire, the KMT seemed to be doing pretty well. Of course we won’t really know until the CCP archives are opened, but certainly the KMT could have won, both in 1949, and even more decisively in 1935.
The commies won from within, not from without. The Bolsheviks inherited the apparatus of the state, while the whites were creating the apparatus of a state from nothing. Similarly the KMT was both not permitted to win, and, like the Israelis, was reluctant to win.
Entryism has always been the left’s preferred and most effective strategy. The only reasons that the communists became significant is the progressive tendency to bow down before whosoever is lefter than thou.
Any society that is capable of absorbing it can get twentieth century tech for free, indeed less than free. People want to offshore their older technology to where the labor is cheaper, and will pay you to take it so that they can utilize cheap labor.
Wherever the accidents of history have cut a society in two, one side communist, one side capitalist, the side that was communist at best stagnated, at worst suffered disastrous economic collapse, while the side that was capitalist progressed at roughly the same rate as others of the same race under the same economic system.
That Nationalist China progressed, while Communist China collapsed, reflects the fact that the KMT were “corrupt warlords”, which is to say, sane and reasonable, while the communists were pure and virtuous, which is to say, raving moonbats frothing at the mouth.
“Whosoever allies with one leftist, allies with every single one”
So FDR should have terminated his elaborate plans to get the US involved in the war after June 22, 1941? Barbarossa actually made FDR even more enthusiastic for war.
Even before that, he consistently took the side of the Soviets and the Chinese Reds against the Japanese-no concern for Soviet or Chinese Red expansion on the Asian mainland but constant chastising of the Japanese. For details:http://mises.org/books/backdoor.pdf
It was necessary to make war on the fascists. It was not necessary to cover up the Katyn forest massacre, nor give half of Europe to Kindly Uncle Joe Stalin. It was not necessary to give China to the commies, but it was necessary to protect it from the Japanese. The Nationalists should have been allowed to retain control of China, should have been supported against both the fascists and the commies.
Had the Nationalists been allowed to retain control, China would have industrialized earlier. All of China would now be as wealthy as Taiwan.
The Nationalists couldn’t keep control of the whole country. They were a corrupt bunch of greedy warlords who hated each other more than they hated the commies.
Actually, you should read the new biography of Chiang Kai Shek by Jay Taylor, “The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China”. The Nationalists certainly had their problems, but the view of the Kuomintang as a bunch of crooks was heavily propagated by the commies and useful idiots such as Joe Stillwell. Even Mainland Chinese scholars are starting to carefully put forward the idea that China would have been better off if Chiang had won in 1949.
That is official history, the politically correct explanation for giving China to the communists. To see reality, compare Taiwan with communist China.
On fleeing to Taiwan, Chiang could control very carefully who got in, who didn’t and what happened with those who did. US aid was of course much easier to distribute in tiny Taiwan, his own personal fiefdom, than in all of China, which he barely controlled.
Mainland Chinese scholars are playing nice with Chiang these days because they want to make friends with Taiwanese scholars, no more.
I understand the need for heroes, but most of the time in history both sides are crooks.
China would have been better without the Commies, I’m no doubting that. But no way it would have got Taiwan levels of prosperity. Taiwan has a lot more going for it than just the KMT. Japan left a productive and educated populace, and American & Japanese investment did a lot for Taiwan, which again is a small country.
China would probably have splintered. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Chiang did not commit mass murder, shatter his countries economy, or order ten percent of his party purged.
When an author wants to depict his villain as evil, he does not show that villain callously harming his enemies, but callously harming his loyal henchmen. When collectivization turned out to be less effective than it was purported to be, despite unremitting terror against the peasants, Mao declared that ten percent of the party were traitors. Thus ten percent had to be identified and condemned, and no amount of loyalty or political correctness could avoid condemnation. That is a lot more evil than Hitler, who was most dangerous to those who were not on his side.
It was not lack of Japanese investment that caused the Hungry Ghosts famine and the purges.
In Korea it was the other way around. It was the North that had all the capital and all the modernity, and the South that was backward, yet the difference between North and South Korea came out much the same as the difference between communist and nationalist China. So on that evidence, the only thing that mattered much was KMT sanity and competence verses Maoist evil, madness, and incompetence.
Every single day following the the Nationalist flight to Taiwan, it was obvious that communists were evil, insane, and suicidally self destructive, while the Nationalists were sane and reasonably competent.
Indeed, in retrospect it should have been obvious from before that. from the very beginning, should have been obvious from day one that the Chinese communist’s compulsory fanaticism was both their one strength, and their horrifying weakness. From the very beginning, communism in China was politics at the expense of production and human life. Without heavy handed Soviet support, and substantial US support, there is no way they could have won, against the comparatively sane, competent, and efficient nationalists. From day one, communism in China was terror, madness, and most of all, self destruction. Though the strength of a madman is like the strength of ten, the mad usually lose, other things being equal. Other things were not equal. The US State Department wanted Mao to win.
To say that the nationalists were corrupt and full of warlords is merely to say that they were the not-left – that like the right, and unlike the left, they were not united by an ideology, but were rather a coalition built on pragmatism and self interest. The left is ideology seeking power, ideology justifying power, which provides unity, but also insanity, and that insanity was floridly on display from the very beginning in China.
To say that nationalists were doomed to lose by being corrupt and composed largely of warlords is to say that the left shall always defeat the not-left. But in practice, the left does not do well in actual war. When push comes to shove, actual violence, the not-left mostly wins, due to greater wealth and competence. When people try to avoid actual armed combat, the left usually wins.
And what did South Korea and Hong Kong have going for them?
Very good, clarifying post.
[…] violent, furiously-masturbating hippies and the Oakland Police, I’m with the Oakland police. As Jim says, "Whosoever allies with one leftist, allies with every single one. . […]
Death to everyone of any age, race, sex or creed who is not both peaceful and honest.
“we must support Governor Romneycare for president because he is electable and Herman Cain is not”
Funny how I seem to remember hearing that four years ago about John McCain. Didn’t Bob Dole’s apologists make the same argument in ’96? (Not that the Republican field in 1996 had _anybody_ in it I’d consider a stellar candidate…) And, for that matter, Gerald Ford’s in 1976, when a demonstrably far superior candidate was running against him in the primaries?
In the US, as Obama demonstrates, it is important to mobilize your base. Who will vote for a white Obama, when we already have a half black one?
This is very true. Aside from libertarians, you also saw this with those Paleocons who allied with the left against the war in Iraq. Anyone who allies with the left becomes absorbed by the left, or at the very least becomes smeared with its filth.
The problem is that any alliance leftwards is always a one way alliance: no enemies to the left, no friends to the right. So, attempting to make the alliance two way, one winds up moving further and further left. Allying leftwards is like negotiating with Palestinians. Memetic selection has created a black hole ideology. If you go near it, you get sucked in.
Romneycare and mass immigration of an underclass to live on welfare supposedly being libertarian.
In the Hispanic parts of California, everyone is on foodstamps and free healthcare. For open borders to be libertarian, you cannot have welfare. The US is for the most part not importing Mexican workers, but the Mexican underclass, the people no one in Mexico wants. For every Mexican you see hanging out at Home Depot for day labor, there are a dozen pregnant fourteen year olds spawning muggers.
When a state in the US has a crackdown, and Mexicans return to Mexico, there are big screams from Mexicans that they do not want these people around.
[…] Herman Cain President 2012 News Source- https://blog.reaction.la/politics/lew-rockwell-drinks-the-lefts-koolaid.html […]