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Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Socialism - Cultural Death Throes
"This
is one of your more profound observations -- one that most liberals (and even a lot of conservatives) don't fully understand
let alone agree with.
U.S. and European socialism was only able to emerge with an "inheritance"
of wealth (national savings) and a profitable business (national economy) created by a multi-generation investment -- real
sacrifice, hard work and continuous innovation. With the legacy of prosperity handed to them, like many children of
successful businessmen who focus on spending the family wealth rather than creating more of it for themselves and future generations,
socialists are free to reject critical family values, use long-standing imperfections in the business model (courtesy of flawed
conservative ideology) to justify wholesale dismantling of a proven winner (rather than more surgical improvements) and to
replace legacy entities with unproven models or even "proven Utopian failures" that allow them to "feel good"
about themselves. The feel good drive motivates them to enter into "Faustian Bargains" with powerful entities
to force and accelerate the change -- allowing the powerful heretofore unthinkable special privileges in the "new world".
Since socialists are into "feeling good" rather than monitoring the impact of their creations on the health
of the underlying business, they remain blissfully unaware (or feel it is irrelevant) that they are spending the entire cumulative
savings of all previous generations and much more in a single generation -- leaving future generations with a smoldering,
bankrupt economy and a crushing debt that robs them of any chance for even a shadow of the standard of living as before.
European socialism is in the throes of collapsing in just 50+ years since the experiment started -- and this with
a major economic subsidy of the US military umbrella that allowed them to direct much more of their national resources to
"social justice" programs. Even their great multicultural experiment has been declared an utter failure by
major government leaders (and virtually impossible to undo). US progressive seem totally immune from the hard lessons
learned by others.
Your point of lack of positive socialism contributions to mankind is also well taken.
I'm sure some could come up with some candidates for the short-term, but what counts is long-term positive impacts.
If you only worry about the very short term, even reckless money printing can be embraced regardless of the longer-term consequences."
I think my friend summarized the situation extremely well. I hope the citizens of the US wake up before it is
too late.
TPM
8:33 pm
Monday, May 16, 2011
Downsizing
I haven't been blogging the past couple of weeks because my wife and I are in the process of
downsizing. After almost 34 years of marriage, the birth and development of our three children, and living initially
in a one bedroom apartment followed by three successively larger homes, we are in the process of selling our large
single family house.
We plan to return to apartment living as an interim step within the next four to six
weeks assuming the sales contract on our current home closes as scheduled. In about a year we plan to move
into a new construction townhouse in the outer suburbs of the Washington DC area. The townhouse will likely have about
40 percent less living space than our current home. We will evolve from a lot with grass to mow and trees to maintain
to a home with virtually no exterior maintenance.
We had been talking seriously about this major life change
for about two years and in late 2010 made a firm commitment to get it done in the spring of 2011. It was tough
to get engaged in the process but we finally got started in earnest about a month ago. We have already
had three yard sales and made four trips to the dump. We plan to have another garage sale in a
few weeks, right before we move to our apartment. We have given away lots of stuff to local charities and
have to arrange for a family room of furniture to be given away along with a couple of other large pieces of furniture.
We also have some additional furniture that will likely end up in the dump.
I have spent hours putting old records
of all types through multiple shredders. I have watched significant parts of my adult life represented by
old useless documents get turned into bags of chopped up paper. During all of our prior moves we were moving to
a larger home and we didn't bother to throw away much of anything when we moved. My wife and I realize we can't keep
all of this stuff for the rest of our lives and now is the time to simplify our lives to the maximum extent possible.
When we are done we will have sorted through everything we own and made an affirmative decision to keep what is left because
we need it for our future or it has great meaning to us.
Somewhere down the road we will downsize again when a
townhouse is no longer an appropriate place for us to live. However, it should be a much simpler process than the major
restructuring of our life that is currently in progress. We have emptied rooms of furniture, sorted through box after
box of records and emptied storage areas throughout our home. And the process continues.
However, I
don't regret getting rid of all of the stuff that is being downsized. My wife and I have all the memories that
the stuff represents. We have accomplished many of our life objectives. We are preparing ourselves to accomplish
our future objectives. We will have a more streamlined living environment from which we can continue our journey.
TPM
9:22 pm
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