The imitators (Thomas Sowell)

[Neil Peart]

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/06/24/the_imitators

If anyone suggested that Tiger Woods should try to be more like other golfers, people would question the sanity of whoever made that suggestion.

Why should Tiger Woods try to be more like Phil Mickelson? If Tiger turned around and tried to golf left-handed, like Mickelson, he probably wouldn't be as good as Mickelson, much less as good as he is golfing the way he does right-handed.

Yet there are those who think that the United States should follow policies more like those in Europe, often with no stronger reason than the fact that Europeans follow such policies. For some Americans, it is considered chic to be like Europeans.

If Europeans have higher minimum wage laws and more welfare state benefits, then we should have higher minimum wage laws and more welfare state benefits, according to such people. If Europeans restrict pharmaceutical companies' patents and profits, then we should do the same.

Some Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court even seem to think that they should incorporate ideas from European laws in interpreting American laws.

[Wyatt_Junker]

The fascination here in America with euro-faggotry started innocently enough, in the late 60's, with a curiosity with gelato, espresso and baguettes. Universities began international exchange programs with satellite campuses in Heidelberg, Florence and Malmo. State employees who had no idea of the real world or college professors who lived in the insulated false worlds of college towns began to yearn for the 'out there' beyond our 'repressive model of red-meat-eating burger joints dotting our boring suburban hellholes'.

But then it got worse, much worse, as we began to adopt what were at first unassuming gestures of the early nineties where the pretension grew from the innocence of mild cultural foreplay to strange and unholy fetishes. Now, restaurants weren't good enough anymore. They had to be called 'ristorantes'. And with the adoption of the yuppie mentality more and more of these wannabe maggots born here in America grew in their own cultural disdain at home, at first a simple disgust with all things americana, but later into full-blown policy as even Supreme Court justices themselves regarded european law as some kind of noble guidebook.

So, it wasn't just the cultural flirtation of public school teachers and the kids raised by Dr. Spock taking their summer vacations in France anymore and pretending to be 'global cosmopolitans'. It was much more insidious than that. We could live with the insincere companies of cultural betrayal like Starbucks and Noah's Bagels as inauthentic as they were. We could pretend with our franchises that we had 'arrived' into some kind of quasi-street market with shop vendors and kiosks. Sure. Why not? It was harmless enough. If only it was contained to that. But it would never stop at just lattés.

Our fascination grew into a quest for elitism, of accepting a kind of social snobbery which transformed itself into a parallel demographic, a shadow culture of people who actually began to not only be disgusted with America but out and out disdain it. This demographic, Starbuck's sippers that they were, were quickly snapped up by the democrats as their own. People who like to bitch, who are never satisfied, complainers and in a word; divas. Now joined with the professional complainer's party, formally and officially, like shit drawn to shit, democrats and college professors, democrats and state employees, democrats and unions even as it killed the employer they worked for, democrats and (insert agitator's name here).

An entire generation of morons born with silver spoons in their mouths whose only hobby consisted of complaining and trying to be 'edgy'. Europe was now like a lost hope, a fantasy world, a psycological reverse Christopher Colombus, grass is greener trope that only grew legs by decapitating the norms of its host country.

Now, it has affected much more than franchises and the earth tone wearing fashion world. It has crept into law as now labor is given more rights as in europe. It has crept into our environmental regulation as now worthless ecological habitats are valued more than whether or not entire towns in Alaska(humans) reach a poverty line only matched by Ethiopians. And now we are being slowly strangled by our own strange fetishes as energy exploration itself, influenced by euro-pretension, has been crapcanned, castrating our GDP. Its no longer about gelato, espresso and baguettes. It has affected our very survival. The auto industry. The work week. The minimum wage. The death penalty. Everything. As our schoolmarmish assholes in Congress squeeze us to death from the inside out and as men turn into women and women, men. Just as in europe, where women grow armpit hair and men act as if their vaginas are in a continual state of pain.

[DesertFox]

We are following the Germans. After Hitler restored Germany's standing in the world, by around 1936, modish krauts in their stylish salons pooh-poohed der Fuehrer. Where the hoi polloi greeted each other with an enthusiastic "Heil Hitler!", the elites rolled their eyes and tiredly chanted the mantra as though it pained their inner souls. This continued until 1945.

What the krauts did then, we are doing now. They followed a charismatic speaker, as we are on the verge of doing. Someone who could spellbind a crowd, stir it to high passion, arouse indignation, stir the milk of hope within breasts. Lead us! Lead us! We cast our fate with you, O Great One!

Their leader led them, alright. With lies, half-truths, inventions from whole cloth. A fabulist, a ham, an entertainer, a story teller, a show-off, popular because entertaining.

Yeah, he led them. Straight to perdition.

[PaulRevere]

I think that you're wrong, Wyatt. Read my by line from F.A. Hayek.

Lefties want only to be selective in their adaptations - ones that they can use to justify their own leftist agendas.

On matters such as nuclear energy, they'll completely ignore the fact that the "sophisticated" French get 80% of their electricity from nuclear power.

[Wyatt_Junker]

I can kind of see that, but Hitler had 'nads. Obama has a clit.

I see the Obama hope'n changers not leading to militant statism, but rather anti-state surrenderism.

The Obama phenomenon is perfectly dickless. And I just can't see Obama being a threat to the world. Perhaps to America, by castrating it, but there will be no ovens.

The only heat from an Obama presidency will come from our foreign enemies seeing him, walking vagina as he is, as a greenlight for nuclear aspirations.

And that's what Obama believes; neutering our hegemony so that other nations can reach parity with us, both economic and militaristic.

[PaulRevere]

In neo-Eurofascism, ovens aren't necessary; neither is carpet bombing cities.

Under the new fascism, Europeans are strangling themselves to death with punishing taxes and regulations. That's why they accept double-digit unemployment for decades, mass under-employment, and critically low birth rates.

The Demo-fascist elitists here know this - it's what they want for us, too.

[DesertFox]

I think PaulRevere's on the right track. It's more like a new form of feudalism than fascism, like what Soviet communism evolved into after Stalin. To be sure, there never was much difference between the politics of feudalism and that of fascism.

The coin of the realm is status, and everyone has his own network that helps him climb so long as he plays the game their way and doesn't run afoul of other power players. In this structure the elites are what the noblemen of old were to the king. They own the opinion-molding apparati (the media), and correspond to the landowners of yore.

It's a feudalism of snobbery, of keeping up with the Joneses, of I'm better than you. Status feudalism.

High status feudalism.

[Wyatt_Junker]

I think that you're wrong, Wyatt. Read my by line from F.A. Hayek.

Lefties want only to be selective in their adaptations - ones that they can use to justify their own leftist agendas.

On matters such as nuclear energy, they'll completely ignore the fact that the "sophisticated" French get 80% of their electricity from nuclear power.


You're right about France's energy independence and how our environmental lobbies, including our media, ignore it, but I think that is a largely separate issue. Certainly leftists are selective in their agenda, which keeps the rhetoric disingenuous and safe, but generally speaking, the way leftists view europe is reminiscent of the lost ark in the first Indiana Jones movie, at least the fantasy of its 'sophistication' with all the awe, reverence and romance it represents.

Whether its the SCOTUS or a college professor adulating euro-norms over our own Constitution, europe is considered 'older' than us, thus wiser. And sure, leftists pick and choose which pieces to pluck from european law while ignoring context, maintaining a 3rd grade exegesis, but that's to be expected. Meanwhile, NPR sounds like euro-worship, the voices of their librarian-like dj voices drawn up a tick more adenoidally than tenors with their balls kicked in and as multiculturalism means anything non-American.

In the end, people see what they want to see, believe what they want to believe, facts be damned. The internet is a perfect example. Here we're supposed to have more information and all its accomplished is to perfect everyone's script and strengthen the arms of propaganda. Information is a stronghold. Ideas are principalities. We wage not against flesh and blood, but it is flesh and blood that chooses which spirit to cling to...

Europe is one such anti-American, anti-freedom, principality that Americans, most in the democrat party, have chosen to prop up as their latest totem.

[DesertFox]

Good, strong arguments, gentlemen, both of youse.

[Wyatt_Junker]

I think PaulRevere's on the right track. It's more like a new form of feudalism than fascism, like what Soviet communism evolved into after Stalin. To be sure, there never was much difference between the politics of feudalism and that of fascism.

The coin of the realm is status, and everyone has his own network that helps him climb so long as he plays the game their way and doesn't run afoul of other power players. In this structure the elites are what the noblemen of old were to the king. They own the opinion-molding apparati (the media), and correspond to the landowners of yore.

It's a feudalism of snobbery, of keeping up with the Joneses, of I'm better than you. Status feudalism.

High status feudalism.

Lords and serfs, landowners and tenants, kings and clowns, bourgeoisie and proletariat (doesn't quite work but there's still distinction), pimps and players - all of them wanting to own the upper third or upper fifth of the heirarchy chart. When I drop in a few flakes of food into my bowl of sea monkeys, the big ones crowd out the small ones.

You even see the beginning of feudalism in grammar school. Reminds me of Upper Playground (http://www.upperplayground.com/06/index.html)(but I'm not into fashion), which refers to where the cool kids hung out at recess while the dorks played four square on the lower playground.

I think what I'm talking about is merely the pretension itself and how even pretension can slowly work its way into fascism over time. A slower velocity than Mugabe, but no less effective given enough time.

For instance, Starbucks is harmless enough. A coffee company. But what it represents is pretension. There's no way a company could serve over priced milkshakes to fat soccer moms if it was called McSlurpie's. But market it according to quasi-euro-norms, paint the floor shit brown and throw a few pamphlets around on its tiny coffee tables on 'world hunger', and BANG, you've just baited the hook for gullible dorks who want to play in the upper playground.

Now, its not like Starbucks is going to rule the world. But dot every block of surburbia with one from California to New Jersey. Pretty soon, over time, it becomes almost a separate voting block. Look around. Now, besides a cell phone, everyone also is driving around with a big brown milkshake in their hand with cool sepia euro-colors on the paper coffee warmer that hugs the middle of the cup like a neat little festive vest you'd put on your lap dog at Christmas.

Now, combine that with more cultural snobbery. Layer in some ristorantes. Bring the entire euro-fantasy to America. Its no longer good enough to have a bear claw at Spudnuts. You have to have a scone at Peet's. Why? I don't know why.

And now cars too, also deeply affected by faggotry. Tiny eCars. The Prius hybrid, still doesn't make much economical sense seeing how its cost is prohibitive and won't pay for itself in fuel yet, but you still have pretensious euro-wannabe maggots shelling out the extra $7k because they want to have that status. The feudalism, at this point, is merely a perception. An explotation of marketing on rubes.

Now, add in the Supreme Court. Halve it down the middle. Half of them are originalists. Half of them are euro-drones. Now, we are getting somewhere dangerous, as Ginsburg herself actually cites european law and other justices refer to our own 'living, breathing document', the Constitution of the United States.

Pretty soon, I can't just laugh at a Starbucks-full-o-faggots anymore. Its starting to actually affect me in real ways. It has gone from a cute curiosity to the slow garroting of my freedom into laws as close to home as Kelo to the latest with detainees in war who get more rights than our own soldiers(and I can guarantee you that that had to do with the quest for european likeness).

What started out as a fun little summer vacation for America-hating, inward college professors in Paris has now morphed into very real legal bullshit. And now, even half the American electorate, as democrats have come to own the same script as europe itself as it slowly succumbs to its own barbarians.

[Penguin]

I nominate this for Thread of the Month. Great writing and thinking on display here, that is for sure.

I'll put my 4 cents* in when I get a chance.

(*Due to high energy prices)

[Neil Peart]

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/06/25/the_imitators_part_ii

It must be a bitter disappointment to those in the media and in politics who have been dying to use the word "recession" that, for the second quarter in a row, there has been no downturn in the economy, though growth has been slow.

Alarmists have been reduced to quoting other alarmists on the supposedly impending recession but that is still not the real thing.

The definition of a "recession" is very clear and straightforward: Two consecutive quarters of negative growth. We have not yet had one consecutive quarter of negative growth.

The fault-finding brigades of critics of the American economy and society are among the reasons why there is so much talk about how we ought to do things that are being done in Europe.

[HomeschoolrsRUs]

I nominate this for Thread of the Month. Great writing and thinking on display here, that is for sure.

Agreed. After the appropriate time frame it should definitely be moved to the Hall of Fame! :thumb:

[Neil Peart]

http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/06/26/the_imitators_part_iii

Some of the people who are most adamant against outsourcing economic activity from the United States to other countries often seem to think we should outsource our foreign policy to "world opinion" or act only in conjunction "with our NATO allies."

Like so many things that are said when it comes to public policy, there is very little attention paid to the actual track record of "world opinion" or of "our NATO allies."

Often there is a blanket assumption that European countries are just so much more sophisticated than American "cowboys." But there is incredibly little interest in the track record of those European sophisticates whom we are supposed to consult about our own national interests-- including, in an age when terrorists may acquire nuclear weapons, our national survival.