In one of her most quoted lines, Margaret Thatcher observed:
The trouble with Socialism is, sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.
The United States has reached the point identified by Lady Thatcher. Other welfare states of the world have as well. William McGurn, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, states:
That crashing sound you hear? It’s the sound of welfare states in collapse. From Albany to Athens, all but the dimmest observers now recognize that the model we’ve been following has run aground—morally, socially and fiscally.
The financial crisis we face is reshaping the notion of government around the world. There is great resistance to change in political circles, but the welfare scam is in its death throes. Politicians who can adjust might survive. Most old-timers will have difficulty. The Democrat Party, in particular, is threatened as Mr. McGurn observes:
Sadly, they’ve become wed to the welfare state’s most debilitating premise—that the sole provider for some of the most important goods and services must be the most inefficient institution in American life: the government.
Most politicians don’t realize that the underpinnings of politics as practiced for the last 100 years has given way. An entirely new philosophical conception of government is necessary and will emerge.
Politicians think their games of buying votes, making promises and outspending the other party still work. Regardless of whether citizens would like the old ways to continue or not, the resources are gone and the economy has been crippled. The paradigm of government must change. The issue is no longer a political game, where outspending and out-insulting the other party was the key to victory. The issue now is survival, specifically can the nation(s) survive?
History books in the future will wonder what happened during the 20th and early 21st Centuries. How could governments deliberately create dependents to use as tools and then enable them to parasitically feed off the productive sectors of their countries? Did they not know the destruction that would result? Or did legislators not care so long as they could enrich themselves and continue to get re-elected?
Governments of the last 100 years will be looked at by History as little more than Ponzi schemes, worse than Bernie Madoff who did not have the ability to coerce his victims.
Hi Monty, I was saddened to hear and see today that Glenn Beck is leaving his five oclock spot on fox. I don’t know what that is all about. I think that he is the most high profile speaker for your (our) point of view. Glen has been invaluable painting the worldwide situation as you have done in this article. Glenn brought up today the “normalcy bias” which really hits the nail on the head and describes most Americans today. From Wikipedia we have a good definition of the term
“The normalcy bias refers to a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects. This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of the government to include the populace in its disaster preparations. The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred that it never will occur. It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before. People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.”
At almost every turn in our nation today we see this normalcy bias at work. Obama and his associates tout the great recovery underway. I nearly wrecked today when I heard Obama on the radio expressing his concern that the radical republicans might derail the recovery with their draconian cuts. The stock market is another thing, most people think it is going up for good economic reasons. I fear that even with voices of warning and reason such as yours and others, most people will just march off the cliff with barely an inkling of what is happening. What is it the Rush says, “ignorance is our greatest enemy”. How true. Keep up the great work, doug Johnson
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