Friday, May 11, 2012

Celebrating at the Bastille - Unconscious Leftists

I couldn't be more amazed to watch the joy of the socialist celebrations in France after taking the elections.
These elections have proven that liberal France is dead - or at least that socialists don't really have a liberal French majority.
Even when the far right casted about 20% of the votes and refused to vote for Sarkozy, Hollande barely got 50% of the votes with very little difference over Sarkozy.
The votes Hollande got consisted of classic liberals (modern liberals, secular, feminist, gay, etc) but also of a large contingent of people who voted just to oppose the Republican Secular strict agenda lead by Sarkozy. These people (mainly marginalized and extremized communities) do not understand or share the values of the liberal left that sincerely embraces them - in some cases even despise them. Hollande couldn't have refused to these votes, but I'm not sure his people understand the undercurrents.
If we do the simple arithmetic, the liberals in France are an absolute minority which managed to take the elections supported by non-liberal populations based on an ad-hoc need.
I would assume that given this anti-Sarkozy coalition, Hollande's administration will evade promoting a "Franchising" policy and not even liberal education to all the French population. The amazing Republican building will be growingly under attack from left and from right.

By the end of Hollande's term the far right in France will be stronger and bigger than ever as well as the non-liberal communities who voted him.
Does Hollande have an alternative? Yes he does. He must take the middle path, cherish the Republican liberal values even at the expense of losing a chunk of his voters. The other way will be far too disastrous for the liberal essence of the republic. Hollande's administration must see itself as the last defender of the Republican values. Otherwise, I'm afraid there will be nothing to stand between the troops of La-Pen and Immigrants' gangs that will clash in the streets.

The Conquest of the Bastille (CC Wikipedia)

Monday, May 7, 2012

Sustainable Liberalism?

In an era where sustainability is one of the most common buzzwords spread by liberals worldwide we have the right to ask ourselves: Is Liberalism itself sustainable?

Liberal ideas carry a lot of real world attributes which we commonly define as positive, like tolerance, human and civil rights, advance of knowledge, higher life standards, novelty by free minds - just to mention a few.*
However, Liberalism bears also a terrible pain. It carries at its womb a time bomb that will bring to its own destruction. Either this aggressive tumor or one of its complications will kill liberalism. Its self assuredness and pacifism.

Modern liberalism is pacifist. Its main stream adherents do not want to fight in real wars. Actually, many times they do not want to fight at all. The belief in Liberalism embeds the belief in man kindness, benevolence and an ever improving world. So, if the good always win and if everyone are good, why should one fight at all.

This liberalism is light years away from the much more realist founders of liberalism or the revolutionaries of the French Revolution, who lived the oppression that they wanted to oust with their liberal ideas.They knew they had to fight and die for the life they wanted.

Modern liberals, mainly western ones, have never felt oppression, commonly the worst thing they went through is unemployment.We grew up in welfare states, we saw too many movies in which the good guys always win and whenever we felt blue we could just open the TV to watch a movie, read a book, go for a drink or go shopping. We didn't have to be out fighting for our families' or ideas' survival.

If you have ever participated in an elections campaign, felt the stress in the days before the elections and celebrated with multitudes a victory, you probably know that feeling of an essential battle been won. A tide of strong feelings that you didn't know exist in you. But, a few days later the feeling is gone. This emotion, this fervor lacks in the liberal movement and when it exists it is commonly turned in the wrong direction.

Some additional characteristics add to the clinical history of our soon to be defeated liberal camp.

Liberal people make little children, while non liberals tend to have many.

Liberal communities (if you can call community to an agglomeration of individuals) tend to be tolerant to ideas that threat their way of life even in a violent way, while non liberal communities do not reciprocate and do not allow liberal ideas to freely enter their realm.

Liberals tend more than others to focus on career and material achievements over ideology and community life. Individualism is venerated while the general good which requires an effort to defend is left for others to do. It is a kind of outsourced values implementation. NGOs to which we contribute from time to time, tweet their links, share their Facebook posts or rarely manifest for are the perfect conscience purifier.

Our family life is a sterile from ideas and actions, and even when it is full with ideals passed to our children, we are rarely activists - thus teaching our children what hypocrisy and that a good liberal doesn't have to stand for his ideas.

Liberal which are activists prefer to reprimand their own community or other liberal communities for not being liberal enough towards others, while exalting non-liberals as mere noble savages. It is safer to verbally castigate a liberal society, since the attached price tag is low. When you attack a non liberal society you may be required to pay higher prices which almost no contemporary liberal is willing to pay.

Living such a sweet life, never having to really fight for your way of life and convictions, tunes down our instincts. Most of us are not able anymore to correctly identify who are the essential rivals. This is easily exemplified by cooperation of leftist organizations with dictatorships and undemocratic regimes. So, either these organizations aren't liberal or they are blind and cannot recognize the enemy. Maybe they cannot take seriously any enemy - after all they believe, the good guys will always win.

Human character is shaped like that of other animals through struggles, combats and playing-training towards them. When daily life is left out of any existential struggle and when we are educated that nothing is worth fighting for, we suppress those basic instincts.

The elites which carry the ideas of every regime are always the first ones to become complacent, lose their instincts and take the path towards the extinction of their own regime. Elites, being spoiled and living well, tend to become cosmopolitan, less provincial and supposedly more and more liberal. This is a stage of suicidal liberalism. Liberalism like any other idea must keep its vitality. It must have a Carthage to rival with if it wants to avoid petrification.

* These 'positive' and benevolent attributes can be considered such only in certain situations. When being a 'good guy' gets you or someone from your family/community killed by the 'bad guys' in your neighborhood, there is no meaning anymore to 'being good'.

Sometimes I feel that Hollywood is one of the main problems of the modern liberalism. Darwin taught us that the fittest, the fiercest and the strongest survives. Extremists, dictators and racists twisted the ideas trying to justify some of the most horrible deeds in human history. Liberals decided that they will negate and turn their back to any notion of Darwinism in politics and society. This is where Hollywood gets into the picture. It seems that liberals truly tend to believe that the good guys will always win. I find no possible explanations to that but two - stupidity or watching too many Hollywood movies.

Hi everybody! Wake up! Bad guys do win if you do not fight back! You cannot assume that wife beaters and child abusers will change their ways nor you can assume the same about crazy extremists, people who think a certain deity allowed them to kill others or deprive their women from basic rights.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Sad May 1st

May 1st is always a day of mixed feelings for me.

On one hand, I tremble thinking about the achievements of socialism and liberalism in the past 200 years and about empowered workers, actually previously slaves, marching and waving red flags - celebrating their dignity.
On the other hand, I think about the great failures, the wars that weren't prevented, the depths of terror to which red flags led and the great betrayal at the end of the 20th century.

I couldn't have for you my fellow readers a better example than the following.

Today a Spaniard friend talked with me about the economical situation in Spain. He started ranting about the situation, the crazy cut downs of the right wing government which is 'selling the country to the Germans'

A: Our government is demented. They are changing laws related to demonstrations expecting that during the summer Spain will burn with manifestations. I didn't expect the right wing government to be so much more radical than the already capitalist previous leftist government. They are handing the country to the Germans.
B: Why to the Germans?
A: Because all the terrible things are done at the request of the German banks.
B: I think you don't fully understand the Germans. Merkel really thinks that the south Europeans are irresponsible and need to learn a lesson.
A: Maybe. But the responsibility should be shared. Investors can't be immune to risk. They invest in Spanish banks and exposed themselves. Their gamble went wrong and instead of them coping with the results, the Spanish state is being sold part by part.
B: Well, that's what Spain (and others) did to Argentina years ago...and the Spanish left didn't even blink...
A: In fact the left here doesn't exist. It's a mere third way.
B: At least Germans are coherent.
A: The pace of changes is brutal. It will take here 2 years to destroy here the welfare state, the same kind of destruction that took you (Israel) 20 years.
B: I tell you again that the life of Argentinians was destroyed much faster, they didn't even have the support, even if virtual, of something like the EU or anyone in the world that could care that they were going down.
A: True. Many times I tell to my Argentinian acquaintances that their past is our future.
B: Other countries in the world were destroyed in months in civil wars and nobody cared. And the Spanish left...what did it do for the Greek people?

An important clarification. I truly believe that people and governments should be the first responsibles for their own deeds and not blame others. There is no redemption for a society which doesn't take responsibility and take bold steps to amend what's wrong internally. Whether the amendment should be brutal austerity or ultra-capitalist changes is debatable. Since economics isn't an exact science, there isn't one formula.

On the ideological level, people who didn't show any empathy and didn't reach out to others shouldn't be surprised when no one shows empathy and doesn't reach out to them.

The failure of the left is global. Instead of establishing a moral stand in hard times, it spent its time on other things and now when the bad times come to their step door people start whining. It didn't rally for people who lost everything, it didn't rally for millions of peoples massacred worldwide, it didn't manifest for human rights in dictatorships. It always opted for fashionable causes.

And no, my left wing party isn't any better.

Workers of the world, show compassion to others! (even when your own middle-class-stomach is full)