The endless war against merit

 

This blog frequently links to historian Victor Davis Hanson’s essays. At his recent essay at American Greatness, he considers the definitions and consequences of socialism and its derivatives ("Do We Even Know We Are All Socialists Now?”).  Here’s his conclusion:

. . . A final note: the Orwellian police state is central to socialism, since the ideology is contrary to innate human nature and when fully implemented quickly ruins all that it touches and is commensurately despised in its fruition. So to force compliance is a 360 degree, 24/7 project that transcends all our institutions and culture.

That is why the woke FBI goes after counter-revolutionary parents at school board meetings or traditionalist Catholics rather than Pentagon leakers or Islamic terrorists.

That is why the FBI and the CIA respectively tried to warp the 2016 election with the phony Steele dossier and in 2020 probably did so by suppressing the truth about the “bombshell” evidence found on wayward Hunter Biden’s laptop.

That is why news disappears off Facebook and the old Twitter. That is why the order of Google search results seems bizarre. That is why Disney or Budweiser suddenly virtue signal their nihilist politics, or why Nike makes the mediocrity Colin Kaepernick a multimillionaire, or Stanford University attempts to purge vocabulary such as “citizen,” “immigrant,” and “American.”

Once socialism takes hold, every mediocrity, every ossified bureaucracy, every constipated careerist, every hack writer and nobody actor, comes out of the woodwork to find his socialist “fair share” of what he lacked in talent or accomplishment.

In the end, perhaps the best definition of socialism is simply “The endless war against merit.”

Read the rest here.

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America: out of order

 

As usual, Victor Davis Hanson nails it.  From American Greatness:

What explains an America that suddenly no longer works? 

First, all of these problems are self-induced. They did not exist until Biden [I would assume that when he refers to “Biden,” VDH means “the Biden Administration.”] birthed them for ideological or political reasons. Apparently, his administration wanted a changing, more favorable electorate and demography at any cost. 

. . .

Second, Biden has no solutions to these self-created problems because of the ideological restraints the Left has imposed on him.

The administration fears the anger of the hard Left more than the furor of the American people. So it will not change, preferring to be politically correct and a failure than to be ideologically incorrect and successful. 

Third, when people object, this administration answers either by blaming others for its self-created mess or by seeking distractions. Now it is faulting gun owners for the crime wave it fostered, supposed “white supremacists” for the racial tensions it fanned, and Putin, whom it appeased.

The common denominator? Biden knows that he inherited a stable, prosperous America and has nearly ruined it. 

Read VDH’s full column here.  But where is the good news?  Sundance at Conservative Treehouse sums up some encouraging and significant push-backs:

[A] more assertive, deliberate, strategic and determined MAGA movement is being noticed everywhere.  There are new combat rules in response to the leftist onslaught toward our children.  . . .

Leftist favorite Netflix, is hemorrhaging users and just lost 30% of its value.  Spotify just refused to renew the leftist idols, the Obamas.  The ultra-leftist Disney Corp just lost their special district status in Orlando, and leftist Twitter is on the verge of a hostile ‘free speech’ takeover by Elon Musk.

. . .

Click here for more.

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