Leftists and alienation

A comment from a reader

Something I've long thought intriguing about Leftists is that the more well-read ones tend to talk a great deal about alienation, lifting it straight out of Marx, and how evil capitalism is the source of all of our alienation.

What I find intriguing about this is it seems that the Leftists eagerly push for things that are bound to produce alienation. In the US, they really like to push a loathing of our history and in particular a loathing of the concept of patriotism. They talk endlessly about the values of "diversity", want as many immigrants as possible, and recoil violently against notions such as a national language. They despise churches. They despise large sporting events. They despise ideas about "core knowledge" as espoused by E.D. Hirsch.

All of these are things that connect people to their fellow citizens. Actually, in the US I am beginning to believe that church attendance remains strong simply because many people are looking for a way of connecting to their fellow citizens.

Even leftist spirituality, and by that I mean the concoction of new age doctrines that find some popularity amongst many leftists, is itself a very narcissistic and isolated approach to spirituality. God (or enlightenment) is to be found INSIDE. Turn IN.

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The grasshopper mentality of the political class

What McCain and Obama -- and we -- should be urgently focused on is not the budget deficit in any given year, but the crushing national debt that all those deficits cumulatively add up to: currently $9.6 trillion, and climbing rapidly. Just paying the interest on that debt will cost the government nearly $250 billion this year, making debt service the fourth-largest item in the federal budget. And since Washington not only has no plan to pay down its debt, but routinely increases it, those interest payments will keep mounting.

Yet the surging cost of interest is nothing compared with the tidal wave of entitlement spending about to crash over us. This is the year that the first of nearly 80 million baby boomers become eligible for Social Security payments; within three years, they will begin drawing Medicare benefits as well. Those two programs alone already account for one-third of the federal budget -- 42 percent if you add Medicaid, which is also focused largely on the elderly. But in the years ahead, their costs will explode. If nothing changes, the Concord Coalition warns, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the national debt will consume every penny of federal revenues in less than 20 years.

Clearly, things will change. They have to. Either taxes will be hiked to unprecedented levels, or spending - especially on entitlement programs - must be forcefully reined in. There is no other alternative short of continuing to run up the national debt, thereby loading our children with an unconscionable financial burden, and imperiling the entire economy in the process.

More here

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Brookes News Update

Will consumer spending drive the US economy into recession?: Until the Keynesian orthodoxy is overthrown and the monetary actions of central banks have been properly analysed the so-called trade cycle will continue to be a recurring feature of our economic landscape
Obama: The coming socialist America: on Voight is one Hollywood star who has kept both his common sense and his patriotism. He cogently points out that the US is going through a 'perilous time, and more than ever, the world needs a united and strong America. If we live to see Mr. Obama president, we will live through a socialist era that America has not seen before, and our country will be weakened in every way'
The anthrax attacks and the media's political bigotry: Roy Eccleston is a politically bigoted leftwing activist with a visceral hatred of President Bush and conservatives in general. Like his leftwing colleagues, Eccleston is apparently unable to detect his own mendacity. Or perhaps he thinks readers are so ignorant of American political affairs that they are unable to detect his lies
Rewarding terrorism: Israel treats terrorists as ordinary criminals, entitled to Miranda warnings, due process, legal representation, and longwinded trials. But terrorists are neither combatants nor common criminals and should be treated as neither. Doing otherwise only results in the deaths of more Israelis
Al Sharpton: Castro Foe?: A couple of week's ago a remarkable event occurred. Al Sharpton he held a protest outside the Castro regime's offices at the United Nations to publicize the plight of Cuba's black political prisoners. As expected, the mainstream media spiked the story. One can only hope that with respect to Castro's political prisoners Sharpton's small protest will grow into something much bigger
What do you get when you combine narcissism and megalomania?: Obama traveled with the largest entourage of any non-president in history. The foreign policy advisers, campaign aides, advance staff and Secret Service agents filled 20 vehicles in motorcades. And that doesn't count the more than 50 American journalists - including the anchors of all three television network news shows - who accompanied him in Europe, Israel and Jordan
Those McFabulous Rainbow Arches: Why do allegedly intelligent, bottom-line-obsessed corporate types abandon the fiscally secure milieu of political neutrality and take sides, officially, on deeply polarizing, socio-cultural issues of the day? This is precisely what McDonald's has done with respect to 'homosexual marriage'

For more postings from me, see OBAMA WATCH, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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