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Murray Rothbard versus the Progressives

Posted by M. C. on November 3, 2022

If you want to do yourself a favor read some Rothbard.

Not only is social democracy still with us in its many variations, but it has managed to define “our entire respectable political spectrum, from advanced victimology and feminism on the left over to neoconservatism on the right.”4 Make no mistake about it, Rothbard warned, “on all crucial issues, social democrats however they label themselves, stand against liberty and tradition and in favor of statism and Big Government.” Furthermore, social democracy is far more insidious than other forms of statism because it claims “to combine socialism with the appealing virtues of ‘democracy’ and freedom of inquiry.”

https://mises.org/wire/murray-rothbard-versus-progressives-1

Joseph T. Salerno

There has been a radical change in the social and political landscape in this country, and any person who desires the victory of liberty and the defeat of Leviathan must adjust his strategy accordingly. New times require a rethinking of old and possibly obsolete strategies. —Murray N. Rothbard1

Murray Rothbard wrote the above words in 1994, shortly before his untimely passing. They sum up the main theme of a series of brilliant articles that he published in the 1990s calling for a radical readjustment of libertarian strategy to the new political and social realities that had emerged in the aftermath of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. In these articles, Rothbard identified both the abstract social philosophy and the concrete political movement that then had emerged as the greatest menace to liberty and society. He also proposed a radical reformulation of the political spectrum and a revised political vocabulary to express the new strategy called for in the altered ideological and political context. 

Before proceeding further, I want to point out that Rothbard’s articles, despite their deep insight and radical implications for libertarian strategy, have been largely overlooked by friend and foe alike for a couple of reasons. First, when he wrote the articles, Rothbard was hard at work on his monumental two-volume treatise on economic thought. Understandably, he wrote the articles quickly as one-off responses to particular events, ideas, and political developments during a period of rapid change, from 1991 to 1994. Rothbard’s new views on strategy were therefore presented as fragments in different articles containing inevitable repetition and overlapping. This obscured the fact that taken together these articles presented a systematic and comprehensive strategy for radical social and political change. Second, the articles appeared in the Rothbard-Rockwell Report a journal of social, political, and cultural commentary. Unfortunately, Triple R’s scintillating polemics and its coverage of an incredibly broad range of topics sometimes diverted the reader from the deep theorizing that informed many of its articles. I confess that I did not appreciate the significance of Rothbard’s articles, and their unity and breadth of vision, until very recently. 

Social Democracy: Identifying the Enemy

After the collapse of communism, and with Nazism and fascism “long dead and buried,”2 Rothbard argued that social democracy was the only remaining statist program, and its advocates were hell bent on making the most of their ideological monopoly. In the “new post-communist world,” Rothbard wrote:

The Enemy of liberty and tradition is now revealed full-blown: social democracy. For social democracy in all of its guises is not only still with us … but now that Stalin and his heirs are out of the way, social democrats are trying to reach for total power.3

Not only is social democracy still with us in its many variations, but it has managed to define “our entire respectable political spectrum, from advanced victimology and feminism on the left over to neoconservatism on the right.”4 Make no mistake about it, Rothbard warned, “on all crucial issues, social democrats however they label themselves, stand against liberty and tradition and in favor of statism and Big Government.” Furthermore, social democracy is far more insidious than other forms of statism because it claims “to combine socialism with the appealing virtues of ‘democracy’ and freedom of inquiry.”5 As shrewd observers of the political scene for a century and a half, social democrats—or left liberals in the American political lexicon—are indeed seriously committed to democracy. As Rothbard explained:

The maintenance of some democratic choice, however illusory, is vital for all varieties of social democrats. They have long realized that a one-party dictatorship can and probably will become cordially hated … and will eventually be overthrown, possibly along with its entire power structure.6

Picking up on the insight of the contemporary political theorist Paul Gottfried, Rothbard noted that the social democrats’ devotion to democracy also serves as a pretext for an attack on those who assert the “absolute” inviolability of the right to free speech and a free press. This assault on free speech, Rothbard presciently pointed out in 1991, 

constitutes an agenda for eventually using the power of the State to restrict or prohibit speech or expression that [neocons and social democrats] hold to be “undemocratic.” This category could and would be indefinitely expanded to include: real or alleged communists, leftists, fascists, neo-Nazis, secessionists, “hate thought” criminals, and eventually … paleo-conservatives and paleo and left-libertarians.7

Progressivism: The Social Philosophy of Social Democracy

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Liberalism, True and False

Posted by M. C. on October 20, 2022

What else are we to think when a president of the United States says that his selection for a new appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court had to be a “black woman,” but when that nominee was asked during the Senate confirmation hearings if she could define a “woman,” she declined, saying that she was not a biologist. So, a “black woman” accepts being nominated for the highest court of the land, but she cannot explain what makes her eligible for that appointment under the declared criteria.

So, to give our own answer to Elliot Dodds’ question, “Is liberalism dead?” Not for as long as there are any who cherish the liberty and autonomy of every human being, along with their own freedom.

by Richard M. Ebeling

Liberalism, True and False

The death of liberalism has been hailed or feared for well over a century now. In the United States, the tribal collectivists of identity politics and critical race theory insist that America has never been about freedom. It has always been a racist society born with the institution of slavery. The idea of liberal individualism is a ruse to hide the oppression and exploitation of women and “people of color” by capitalist white males.There was an underlying humility in the older classical liberalism that assumed that each person could better find his own way than to presume that political paternalists could make better decisions for them.
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Among conservatives, liberalism is rejected for not fostering a proper moral sense in people and creating a group loyalty of something outside of and better than “merely” the autonomy of the narrowly self-interested individual, both inside and outside of the marketplace. The role of a properly led political order is to inculcate and instill such views and values in the American citizenry. A renewed sense of national identity and purpose is necessary to save the “soul” of America.

Both on “the left” and among conservatives, there is an intolerance and vehement dislike for many, if not all, forms of intellectual and cultural diversity (the latter having nothing to do with the scam notions of “diversity” among the “politically correct”). There is a deep desire among both these political groups for a far greater homogenization of humanity in thought, deed, and societal identity.

“Progressives” and conservatives want to plan your life

This is reflected in their respective willingness to turn to those in political power to use the coercive authority of government to impose their dogmas on the general population. Those on “the left,” in the name of “racial and gender justice” and saving the world from “climate change,” wish to use the government to control, regulate, and plan the economic and social activities of everyone in society. Their ideal is the centrally planned economy under which “right-thinking” people in government (that is, people like ‘them”) would determine and dictate the wages we could earn and the prices we might pay, the types of employment and workplace environments we would be required to accept, and the variety of goods and services and the means of production to provide them.

Our use of words is to be circumscribed to fit their ideological lexicon of race and gender. But if someone is looking for a revised dictionary of clearly defined new terms and meanings that can serve as a “safe space” to assure one does not offend any in society, they will not find it. Male and female and all imaginable things in-between are now amorphous concepts that have no linguistically certain meanings. What else are we to think when a president of the United States says that his selection for a new appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court had to be a “black woman,” but when that nominee was asked during the Senate confirmation hearings if she could define a “woman,” she declined, saying that she was not a biologist. So, a “black woman” accepts being nominated for the highest court of the land, but she cannot explain what makes her eligible for that appointment under the declared criteria.

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Before Progressives Condemn Capitalism, They Should Be Able to Define It

Posted by M. C. on August 10, 2022

If there is no growth in the money supply, prices and interest rates will best reflect the preferences of a society. An Austrian economics definition of capitalism is the interplay of supply and demand, without any growth in the money supply. In this form of capitalism individualism will never pay off. Profits can only be realized if people in society stand to benefit as well.

https://mises.org/wire/progressives-condemn-capitalism-they-should-be-able-define-it

Heiko de Boer

Many people blame capitalism for ever-increasing consumption, individualism, and the greedy pursuit of profits. Not very often do we see capitalism defined in any other way. In this article, I suggest an Austrian economics definition of capitalism that explains capitalism economically and without moralistic tones.

Human Actions Determine Prices and Interest Rates

The basis of Austrian economics price theory is human action. People must make choices on how to spend their scarce time and resources. They aim to improve their situation by ranking their subjective preferences and realizing as many of these preference, one by one.

This explains why the price of water is much lower than the price of diamonds. The supply of water is more than sufficient to meet almost all our needs. It is the last added unit of water that determines its price, which is many times lower than if the supply of water would satisfy the most important use only.

Interest rates are also a category of human action and are an indication of our time preference. This time preference applies to money and goods and services. A young society will be more inclined to save and invest than an older society. Their lower time preference translates into a lower interest rate as more money is offered for investing. Additional investments make it possible to expand the production structure.

By expanding a production structure, a society can consume more in the future. Consuming more can mean many things. If the purchasing power of people stays the same, but people only need to work three days a week instead of five days, people may still feel better off. Or, by investing we can produce similar goods, but with less pollution.

The interplay between interest rates and prices as they come about in a free marketplace, is shaping the production structure such that it meets the needs of society. The interplay of supply and demand could be termed capitalism. However, for a proper definition, more is needed.

What Money System Works Best?

The signaling function of prices and interest rates is distorted by central banks policies. Monetary policies prescribe that consumer goods prices must rise, according to the European Central Bank by “on average” 2 percent per year. Central banks find it unacceptable if a free market creates prices that are going down or do not rise sufficiently.

Central banks are creating money out of nothing, aiming to stimulate demand. More money means more competition for the same amount of goods, with upward price pressures as a result. Banks and central banks jointly issue more credit than what would be possible by savings alone. The additional offer of money pushes the interest rates down. The balance that prevailed in the time market is artificially disturbed.

Initially, money growth will ‘be good for the economy.’ More money is available for investing at a lower interest rate. It is as if the market has given a signal that people in society want to consume more in the future. However, consumers did not signal any change in consumption preferences.

There will come a time when the artificially low interest rate tends to rise, and prices adjust reflecting people’s actual preferences. Producers will be faced with rising production and refinancing costs. After the boom a bust will naturally follow.

The best money system is one that best reflects the preferences of people in society. This will be the case if there is no growth in the money supply. The Austrian school describes this as a sound money system. A proper definition of capitalism would then be the interplay of supply and demand, without any growth in the money supply.

Individualism, Profits, and Externalities

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Why Progressives Love Government “Experts”

Posted by M. C. on June 10, 2022

The State has always been the patrimony of some privileged class or other; a priestly class, an aristocratic class, a bourgeois class, and finally a bureaucratic class.

Moreover, state bureaucratic efforts to plan society from the center, Bakunin noted,

will demand an immense knowledge and many “heads overflowing with brains” in this government. It will be the reign of scientific intelligence, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant, and contemptuous of all regimes. There will be a new class, a new hierarchy of real and pretended scientists and scholars.

https://mises.org/wire/why-progressives-love-government-experts

Ryan McMaken

In twenty-first-century America, ordinary people are at the mercy of well-paid, unelected government experts who wield vast power. That is, we live in the age of the technocrats: people who claim to have special wisdom that entitles them to control, manipulate, and manage society’s institutions using the coercive power of the state. 

We’re told these people are “nonpolitical” and will use their impressive scientific knowledge to plan the economy, public health, public safety, or whatever goal the regime has decided the technocrats will be tasked with bringing about. 

These people include central bankers, Supreme Court justices, “public health” bureaucrats, and Pentagon generals. The narrative is that these people are not there to represent the public or bow to political pressure. They’re just there to do “the right thing” as dictated by economic theory, biological sciences, legal theory, or the study of military tactics. 

We’re also told that in order to allow these people to act as the purely well-meaning apolitical geniuses they are, we must give them their independence and not question their methods or conclusions.

We were exposed to this routine yet again last week as President Joe Biden announced he will “respect the Fed’s independence” and allow the central bankers to set monetary policy without any bothersome interference from the representatives of the taxpayers who pay all the bills and who primarily pay the price when central bankers make things worse. (Biden, of course, didn’t mention that central bankers have been spectacularly wrong about the inflation threat in recent years, with inflation rates hitting forty-year highs, economic growth going negative, and consumer credit piling up as families struggle to cope with the cost of living.)

Conveniently, Biden’s deferral to the Fed allows him to blame it later when economic conditions get even worse. Nonetheless, his placing the economy in the hands of alleged experts will no doubt appear laudable to many. This is because the public has long been taught by public schools and media outlets that government experts should have the leeway to exercise vast power in the name of “fixing” whatever problems society faces. 

The Expert Class as a Tool for State Building

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This Is How the Progressives Will Write the History of Covid

Posted by M. C. on February 12, 2022

How many people today are aware that America’s past experiments in Prohibition, ethnic discrimination, and eugenics were all once fervent policies of progressivism? And in many ways it already seems to have begun: only days after a Johns Hopkins University study found that lockdowns caused far more harm than good, the Biden administration claimed it has “not been pro-lockdown; that has not been his agenda—most of the lockdowns actually happened under the previous President.”

https://mises.org/wire/how-progressives-will-write-history-covid

Robert Zumwalt

It seems obvious that wherever vaccine mandates, mask mandates, and lockdowns have been imposed in response to covid-19, progressive political and media elites have been the driving forces behind them. This is clear to those of us alive today, but it is worth considering whether future history books will attempt to erase progressives’ culpability for the disasters their covid policies have caused. The argument that follows is speculative, but bad ideologies should be held to the fires of their own making, and it seems to be in the nature of progressivism to attempt to escape the historical reckoning it is due.

Not long ago, it seemed more likely that the progressive elites would eventually just declare covid-19 to be over and herald themselves as humanity’s saviors. But as the pandemic has worn on, the cracks in the covid disinformation regime have widened for all to see. The failures and destructiveness of their policies are now beyond deniability to reasonable people, and so long as it is well known that progressivism was the driving force behind those policies, this episode will tarnish its reputation and its core dogma that technocratic social planners holding “correct” moral beliefs will save mankind from itself.

Therefore, it now seems likely the progressive elites who engineered and proselytized these disastrous public health policies will begin to distance themselves from those actions and eventually attempt to paint a new history absolving their ideology from today’s failures. Philosophy professor Alex Rosenberg argues in How History Gets Things Wrong that narrative histories almost always get the “why” of history wrong because the narratives we spin about history, especially popular histories, are usually motivated by our own moral causes. If true, perhaps even the “what” of history can be distorted for the same reasons.

As Murray Rothbard demonstrated in The Progressive Era, American progressivism was born of just this type of motivated moral cause:

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The Hypocrisy of “Progressives”

Posted by M. C. on January 9, 2022

This is an excerpt from Thomas Sowell’s classic ‘Dismantling America’ — https://amzn.to/3Ewkbhl

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Dear Conservatives: It’s Time to Separate School and State – The Future of Freedom Foundation

Posted by M. C. on January 7, 2022

Nikole Hannah-Jones, of the New York Times‘ fact-deficient 1619 Project, let the mask drop completely

“I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught,” she told NBC’s “Meet the Press” – as if this was a suggestion recently floated and not the entire basis on which the government-run school system fools parents into believing that teachers and administrators give a damn what they think.

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/dear-conservatives-its-time-to-separate-school-and-state/

by Scott McPherson

For decades, so-called “progressives” and other leftists have claimed that elected local school boards give parents control over education. Everyone knows it’s a lie, but few have had the courage to speak up. Still, the delusion persists. On the day after Christmas, Nikole Hannah-Jones, of the New York Times‘ fact-deficient 1619 Project, let the mask drop completely.Let parents and families find the best school without government interference
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“I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught,” she told NBC’s “Meet the Press” – as if this was a suggestion recently floated and not the entire basis on which the government-run school system fools parents into believing that teachers and administrators give a damn what they think. “We send our children to school because we want them to be taught by people who have expertise in the subject area.”

No, Ms. Hannah-Jones, children go to school to learn fundamental skills, like reading, writing, and arithmetic. Across the nation, “public” schools are failing to deliver – despite their large staffs of credentialed faculty. Schools are instead expensive indoctrination centers, “day jails for kids,” as John Holt once wrote, completely hostile to parents and focused on promoting mind-destroying concepts like “gender fluidity,” “critical race theory,” “restorative justice,” “psychoeducation,” and other modern tenets of Marxist ideology. Still claiming otherwise is the height of perfidy.

Hannah-Jones’ view of parental involvement is no outlier. Pennsylvania’s governor, Tom Wolf (D-Teachers Unions), recently vetoed a bill that would have put curricula online, and in Scottsdale, Arizona, the school board is actually conducting opposition research on uppity parents. Scariest of all, the National School Boards Association, the Department of Justice, and the White House all colluded to brand protesters at school board meetings (read: concerned parents and taxpayers) as domestic terrorists! What was once said quietly at cocktail parties is now becoming public policy.

Most people are (finally) waking up. A survey by Free to Learn found majorities expressing concern over the politicization of schools and access to curricula. Sixty-seven percent support the ability of parents to exempt students from anything they believe is “harmful or inappropriate,” and a resounding 81 percent said they were “concerned” about the overall quality of education children are receiving – 48 percent saying they were “very concerned.” Driven in part by COVID-19 hysteria, an exodus from government schools to private and religious schools is currently underway, and according to the Census Bureau, the percentage of homeschooled students has more than tripled in the last year.

Conservatives are the most alarmed by the state of public schools, and with good reason. Right-leaning ideas, individuals, and organizations in schools are treated with hostility, while leftist insanity goes unchecked. For example, in Michigan’s Farmington Public Schools, students are encouraged to join Black Lives Matter protests and to “donate to bail efforts” for those arrested. The Mankato School Board in Minnesota voted unanimously in favor of “additional” pay for non-white teachers. A teacher in Paso Robles, California, told members of a high school Conservative Club to “jump off a bridge.” Taft High School in Chicago denied students the opportunity to form a chapter of Turning Point USA.

Unfortunately, conservatives are drawing the wrong conclusions. The trend seems to be in favor of taking over schools, believing this will improve quality. In a commentary for RedState, Kira Davis told her readers, “It’s time to get unpleasant.”

“There’s no playing nice with these people. The whole thing has gotten out of hand, and we parents are to blame. We got too comfortable. We believed the people we elected to our school boards were on our side. After all, they are our neighbors, they are our fellow citizens. These aren’t hardened politicians. They’re local concerned citizens who want to serve.

“But we were wrong. They are not just regular citizens. They are not on our side. They are not here to serve.”

Davis is correct, but her prescription that conservatives should run for school board positions is flawed. “I say the time has come to cause trouble and keep causing it until we get what we want,” she writes. A few states, like Arizona, Florida, Missouri, and Tennessee, are considering making school board elections partisan. Another mistake is so-called “parental rights” bills being considered in state legislatures. The conservative group U.S. Parents Involved in Education, which lobbies for an end to federal meddling in education, warned that the actual language in these laws could undermine the stated intent.

Conservatives who want to “take back our schools” or implement a system of “school choice,” are certainly acting in good faith; they genuinely want good schools where kids can learn and where teachers and administrators respect parents’ values. But viewing parents as “customers” is simply misguided when the government is running the show. In this politicized atmosphere, every decision related to a child’s education is a zero-sum game: one side must lose in order for the other to win. A sense of triumph over political enemies may bring temporary gratification, but that will soon evaporate when the “other side” wins the next election. It is in the marketplace alone where diverse demands can be met without one side losing.

If conservatives want better schools, they really should “cause trouble, and keep causing it.” What is missing is an accurate assessment of what that requires. Many political analysts are predicting a swing to the right in the years ahead, which could well place conservatives in positions where they have an opportunity to radically alter the status quo. Nothing could better guarantee an end to the monolithic power of teachers’ unions and government-school bureaucracies, and a rebirth of quality education in America, than a complete separation of school and state.

Let parents and families find the best school without government interference. That’s real choice.

This post was written by: Scott McPherson

Scott McPherson is a policy adviser at the Future of Freedom Foundation, and author of Freedom and Security: The Second Amendment and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. An advocate of the Free State Project, he lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

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12 Reasons Why Progressives Should Rethink Their Leaders’ Failing Revolution – LewRockwell LewRockwell.com

Posted by M. C. on December 6, 2021

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/12/no_author/12-reasons-why-progressives-should-rethink-their-leaders-failing-revolution/

By Mahatma Orwell

Dear Progressive Friends,

Is our survival at stake? Why? As leaders tell the story, existential threats loom everywhere. Viruses. Climate change. Race-gender bias. Their list keeps growing.

Our leaders – politicians, technocrats, academics, media, activists – insist that we must fear for our health and security instead of our freedom. We should obey instead of asking questions. We should shun dissenters instead of seeking unity.

So we’ve accepted fear and division. Now leaders want us to help them transform our political, economic, and social lives in a “Great Reset” or cultural revolution. Then they will “Build Back Better” a global technocracy they run without our help.

We all want to support good causes. But transforming our lives in areas that are not broken may not be the best cause. Thoughtful progressives should consider a dozen likely major mistakes by leaders, and rethink the revolution:

  1. Overconfident Leaders. The worst existential threat of all may be leader error. History shows that bold social reformers overreach and hurt people. They cause crises such as poverty, famine, and war, and have to scrap their plans and start over. Millions died in the 1900s because of leader error. Today’s leaders need more caution and self-restraint, and less certainty and ruthlessness.
  2. Censorship. Leaders and their big tech allies err in censoring disagreement with official narratives like “settled science” and “community standards.” Like us, they make mistakes, and need critical feedback to learn and correct errors. A sure sign of a failing vision is that it imposes right-think by force. Leaders’ erratic experts have lost credibility as their stories keep changing. This pushes us to research facts ourselves, and build more accurate and honest expertise for all.
  3. False Progress. Leaders err in defining “progress” as group struggle toward perfect equality. This 250-year-old cult of Rousseau, Hegel, and Marx promises utopia, but crushes individuality, human nature, and natural incentives, and idolizes an all-powerful state. It’s not progress to suppress natural differences because activists don’t get the value of diverse views, interests, and skills. Real progress starts with each person’s unique value and free will to act by choice.
  4. Ignoring Millennia of Experience.

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Where D.C. Goes From Here After Pelosi’s Big Day – Gold Goats ‘n Guns

Posted by M. C. on November 10, 2021

What will be terrible coming out of that bill is the new administrative powers, snooping, regulations on travel, cryptocurrencies, etc. which will continue to strangle the middle class and ensure the continued roll up of wealth in the U.S. from the middle and lower classes to major firms.

They will not only wind up with the lion’s share of the funds, but also operate in a landscape where the costs of the new rules fall disproportionately on smaller firms, increasing their competitive advantage.

https://tomluongo.me/2021/11/09/where-d-c-goes-from-here-after-pelosis-big-day/

Author: Tom Luongo

I was contacted over the weekend by Sputnik News to give them my thoughts on Nancy Pelosi’s announcement to force through votes on the two big spending bills she’s been stymied on for months now. The opposition to these bills, even the Infrastructure Bill she eventually got through the House at the midnight hour, is increasing because the perceived need for them is falling.

Sputnik published their article this morning and is worth your time (not just because some of my ideas are presented). Since this bill passed the realization that the “Build Back Better” Bill of Davos’ dreams is still in serious trouble.

The fact that Pelosi arm-twisted this hard so close to last week’s electoral shellacking should confirm for you just how desperate things look on Capitol Hill. There is a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party which is playing out both in Domestic and Foreign Policy. More on that later in the week.

Since Sputnik didn’t use all of my comments I’m publishing them here to keep things brisk and clarify any finer points.

Q:How will the “transformative” Build Back Better Act change the everyday lives of ordinary Americans?

That hasn’t passed yet, and if the moderate Democrats in the Senate were listening to the voters on Election Day, they should continue to hold out against it and kill it completely. Compared to the original text of the bill the BBB Act monetarily isn’t a big deal. Most of Trump’s tax cuts are still in place.

What will be terrible coming out of that bill is the new administrative powers, snooping, regulations on travel, cryptocurrencies, etc. which will continue to strangle the middle class and ensure the continued roll up of wealth in the U.S. from the middle and lower classes to major firms.

They will not only wind up with the lion’s share of the funds, but also operate in a landscape where the costs of the new rules fall disproportionately on smaller firms, increasing their competitive advantage.

Q: Six Democrats, known as The Squad, voted against the infrastructure bill. Do you expect more infighting within the Democratic party, which is soon set to vote on the $1.85 trillion climate, tax, and social policy bill?

Yes, I actually do.  The Democratic Party isn’t a political party per se.  Instead, it is best to think of it as a three-headed coalition of the aggrieved. 

They are in panic mode to ‘just sign anything’ and give their people something to run and fundraise on, even though they already know they’ve lost the mid-terms. 

What happened on Friday was more interesting from the Republican side of the aisle (as always) as enough of them caved to politically neuter “The Squad” on this vote.

These squishy RINOs did what they were supposed to do, betray their constituents at the last minute to serve whatever higher master, in my view the ones who just met at COP26, they answer to. 

By neutering “The Squad” over this vote with the help of RINOs, it will be easier for Pelosi and company to get The Squad to cave over the second bill.  The Progressives got their heads handed to them last night. 

See the rest here

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Erie Times E-Edition Article-Rejecting meritocracy clashes with nation’s basic premises

Posted by M. C. on August 8, 2021

It is a virtue of meritocracy that it produces inequality. ‘You need,’ Wooldridge writes, ‘above-average rewards to induce people to engage in … self-sacrifice and risk-taking. Reduce the rewards that accrue to outstanding talent and you reduce the amount of talent available to society as a whole.’

Follow the link below to view the article. Rejecting meritocracy clashes with nation’s basic premises https://erietimes-pa-app.newsmemory.com/?publink=1c96bd1de_1345e9c

Rejecting meritocracy clashes with nation’s basic premises

‘Even young Mozart had to practise.’ – Adrian Wooldridge WASHINGTON – This cultural moment is defined by the peculiar idea that America has such a surplus of excellence, it can dispense with something that should be rejected as inequitable – rigorous competition to identify merit. Progressives are recoiling from the idea that propelled humanity’s ascent to modernity: the principle that people are individuals first and primarily, so individual rights should supplant rights attached to group membership.

Progressives’ unease with society measuring merit when allocating opportunity and rewards is discordant with the nation’s premises. And rejecting meritocracy at a time when China – the United States’ strongest geopolitical rival ever – is intensifying its embrace of it is ‘an act of civilisational suicide,’ Adrian Wooldridge warns.

In his book ‘The Aristocracy of Talent,’ the Economist’s political editor and Bagehot columnist argues that in pre-modern societies ‘the most important economic resource was not the brain inside your head but the land under your feet.’ Today, some anti-modern progressives are wary of intelligence because it is an engine of inequality.

So they attack selective public schools that base admissions on standardized tests. All uses of such tests, and Advanced Placement high school classes, and other sorting procedures are stigmatized because they produce disparate outcomes, which supposedly reveal ‘systemic racism.’ That dangerous dogma collides with this fact: Substantial cognitive stratification is inevitable in modern, information-intensive societies. As Wooldridge says, there cannot be sustained economic growth without meritocracy.

Pascal said, ‘We do not choose as captain of a ship the most highly born of those aboard.’ Thomas Paine said hereditary legislators would be as absurd as a ‘hereditary mathematician.’ And Wooldridge says, ‘Most of us would hesitate before flying with a pilot who had been chosen by lottery.’

He says Martin Luther’s greatest contribution to modernity was not Protestantism but competition: Schism meant that faith factions had ‘to improve their performance or lose their market share.’ Meritocracy, feudalism’s antithesis, was wielded by the French Revolution as a hammer to smash feudalism’s remnants: The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen declared all citizens ‘equally admissible’ to all public ‘offices and employments … with no other distinction than that of their virtues and talents.’ As Wooldridge says, Enlightenment thinkers, aiming to match ‘talent to opportunity and knowledge to power,’ stressed the difference between natural aristocracies of talents and artificial aristocracies of breeding and inheritance.

Some progressives, who are more interested in minimizing inequality than maximizing opportunity, insist that not even industriousness makes an individual deserving is because it is an inherited trait. However, less loopy progressives rightly warn that there can be inherited hierarchies in meritocratic societies. America does fall short of Thomas Jefferson’s hope for ‘culling’ talent ‘from every condition of our people.’ SAT prep classes are not models of social diversity; parents are conscientious (this is not a vice) about transmitting family advantages to their children.

The answer, however, is to improve the culling, not to jettison the aspiration on the ground that all metrics of merit must be unfair. A first step would be to rescue children from uneducated educators of the sort who natter about ‘racist’ arithmetic and the ‘myth’ that some students are more arithmetically gifted than others.

Wooldridge reminds us that the ancient Greeks contrasted government by the best (aristocracy) with government by the richest and best-connected (oligarchy). Although the idea of aristocracy grates on democratic sensibilities, in the modern age a true aristocracy, meaning the ascendency of the talented, should be an aspiration. It need not mean an entrenched class insulated from the churning of competition. Indeed, it cannot mean that: In a society of careers truly open to talents, a real aristocracy will be constantly weeded and refreshed by upward – and downward – mobility driven by competition.

America, as Wooldridge writes, was ‘born meritocratic.’ Meritocracy is as American as immigration, which predisposes Americans to believe in ‘self-made men’ (a phrase used by Henry Clay in 1832). Meritocracy is as American as the frontier, where life ‘on the edge of the civilized world encouraged self-reliance.’

It is a virtue of meritocracy that it produces inequality. ‘You need,’ Wooldridge writes, ‘above-average rewards to induce people to engage in … self-sacrifice and risk-taking. Reduce the rewards that accrue to outstanding talent and you reduce the amount of talent available to society as a whole.’

Meritocracy, Wooldridge says, ‘is the closest thing we have today to a universal ideology.’ It, like many other good things, must, however, be saved from today’s profoundly retrogressive progressivism.

Contact George Will at georgewill@washpost.com.

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