The Coming Age of Social Darwinism...

Things look pretty bleak these days if you're a Lefty. European-style social democracy, with it's cradle-to-grave mentality, it's four weeks of paid vacation (even for people who don't work), and it's generous 'safety net' of myriad welfare payments, is about to come to an abrupt end. European governments can no longer afford to pay for it all. Even the attempt by the larger countries of Europe to slag some of the expense of their enormous social spending commitments off on their smaller neighbors -- they called it the European Union, but the only thing it was ever designed to do was to make Irish laborers pay the expenses of French retirees, and Spanish farmers supply the funding to send an Italian to college for 12 years -- has failed miserably.

The riots you see in the streets of Athens, Madrid, Rome and Lisbon are the first indication that the political Left is beginning to realize that it's free ride -- intellectually, economically, politically, and socially -- is about to stop short. Why? Because it's about to be defunded by governments who will have to either practice some form of austerity, or collapse completely. And it's all about to happen in the United States, too.

Burnham, Orwell and Obama, Part Two...

Force. Fraud, and Managerial Big Brother

When last we discussed these topics, we had laid the basic framework beneath both Burnham's Managerial Revolution, and Orwell's 1984. This time, we're going to demonstrate how Managerialism, coupled with the government monopoly of force, and the political system's penchant for fraud, brought us to President Titanic...err...Obama.

Burnham began with a basic premise: that the nature of all societies has been Hierarchical, consisting of a High, a Middle, and a Low; that these three groups have competing aims, and that politics can never be conducted honestly, nor without varying degrees of violence and coercion.

Burnham, Orwell and Obama, Part One...

Winston Smith, The Managerial Revolution, And Our Current Crisis
Lately, I’ve been talking a lot about George Orwell here. I can’t seem to help myself, and I promise, it’s not because I am obsessed by the man’s writing, though it is hard not to be. I would consider Orwell to be perhaps one of the three best writers of the 20th Century (Winston Churchill and H.G. Wells round out that list, IMO), and without a doubt, the best political writer of the second half of the same era.

It’s not just that books like 1984 and Animal Farm are great reads, telling interesting stories, but that they seem to reflect our own times so much that it’s difficult not to imagine that someone isn’t following his script.

The Presidency of Narcissism and Managerialism...

Professor Hanson on the narcissism and the "presidential survival" instinct of our recent crop of so-called "leaders". 

I think, though, what the Professor has missed -- and he's not alone in this regard -- is that we aren't being led astray so much by defective personalities, as we are being deliberately hijacked by a professional class of Managers; the sort identified by James Burnham in his 1940's books The Managerial Revolution, and The Machiavellians.


If this is true, then it is not so surprising that the Professor can dissect the administrations of both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and not only find startling similarities, but also a hollowness of character, and shallowness of personality.

Solyndra, Obama, and Socialist Managerialism...

With regards to our current political and economic circumstances, the question has been asked repeatedly: Is Barack Obama a Socialist?