Looking at a map of blue Democratic states and red Republican states, it is easy to fall into the trap of concluding that the U.S. is divided along geographic lines into separate societies. On the basis of this assumption, Democrats during Republican administrations and Republicans during Democratic administrations often revive old theories of states’ rights to defend their constituencies from the other party. But this is a potentially fatal prescription based on a mistaken diagnosis. The consequence of placing false hopes in federalism could be ceding power by default to the national managerial overclass.

For most of American history, the Mason-Dixon line was the major division in political geography. From the 1800s until the late 20th century, there was a Southern elite party allied with much of the Northern white working class—the Jeffersonian Republicans to the Roosevelt-Johnson Democrats. And for two centuries there was a Northern elite party—the Federalists, Whigs, and Lincoln-to-Eisenhower Republicans—based in New England and the upper Midwest, which sometimes found allies among alienated white Southern hill country populists and championed the rights of black Southerners, on the realist principle that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

There is no longer a Southern gentry with values and lifestyles and dialect that are distinct from those of the old Northeastern patrician elite. The former regional oligarchies have fused into a single homogeneous national overclass, mostly hereditary but partly meritocratic. Its geographically mobile, careerist members attend the same selective private and public universities, speak the same homogenized non-regional elite dialect, read the same newspapers and ‘zines, watch the same TV shows and movies, follow the same fashions and have the same diets.

There are no red and blue states. The most accurate maps of voting are county maps, not state maps. And the county maps show that the major partisan division, in every region of the U.S., is between urban cores and everywhere else. Outside of densely populated metro areas, California is red. Most metro areas in Texas are blue. Because cities and counties are mere creations of state governments, the moment that politicians representing a slight majority of statewide voters capture power in state government they can use that power to overrule local governments everywhere in the state. This means that, once a majority of voters in a few large metropolitan areas capture a state legislature and governor’s office, there may be no way for their exurban and small-town rivals to fight back.

Describing this as an “urban-rural” divide is wrong. Only 1.3% of American workers actually work on farms. The major divide everywhere is within metro areas: between downtown business districts and inner suburbs, on the one hand, and outer suburbs and exurbs, on the other.

The New Class Geography

Does this partisan divide reflect different societies, each of which could exist apart from the other? No. It reflects different classes as well as different racial and religious groups within the same highly centralized, deeply integrated society. The populations of hub cities in the U.S., as in Europe, tend to include the mostly-white, college-credentialed economic elite in business, finance, the professions, the academy, media, and government, and a largely-immigrant working class that labors for them for low wages in menial service jobs. While some commute from the outer ring to the urban cores, most working-class Americans of all races live and commute and work in the suburbs and exurbs. In addition to providing low-prestige services like fast food and discount retail, mostly to each other, the exurban working class works in logistics, infrastructure, manufacturing, energy, agribusiness and other “dirty” productive industries exiled from the hub cities of the overclass.

Think of today’s highly nationalized and urbanized U.S. as the United City-State of America. Imagine putting all of the blue hub city cores—the downtowns and inner suburbs of New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Atlanta—together in a single big blue circle. Then imagine putting all of the exurbs of the same cities together in a much larger red ring around the blue inner circle, with a checkerboard pattern of contested suburbs.

This imaginary diagram illustrates the new reality that modern American national politics is essentially New York-style urban politics, replicated everywhere. All of the hub city cores are the equivalent of Manhattan today, and all of the peripheries are the equivalent of New York City’s outer boroughs. This explains why nobody thought it odd that both presidential candidates in 2016 were New Yorkers. And it explains why a contributor to National Review’s Never Trump issue in 2016 mocked Trump’s “outer borough accent.”

The newly consolidated national managerial and professional overclass is still divided among the two parties, although it is becoming more Democratic in partisanship, now that the Democrats are the party of the college-educated and of the most politically influential U.S. industries, Silicon Valley and Wall Street. But whether they are Clinton-Obama-Biden Democrats or Bush-Romney-Ryan-Haley Republicans, the hub-city oligarchs tend to share the same public philosophy of woke neoliberalism—moderately progressive on cultural and social issues, while economically center-Right, in favor of the free market when it comes to trade, immigration, regulation of tech and finance and hostility to private sector unions (as distinct from public sector unions, part of the Democratic coalition). In each party, the donors and managers and professionals have far more in common with those of the other party—in terms of education, lifestyle, and values—than they do with most of their own party’s non-elite voters, whom party elites manipulate with various “culture war” issues—cost-free gestures of affirmative action tokenism on the Left, insincere rhetoric about outlawing abortion on the Right.

The consolidation of almost all political, social, and economic power in a single national ruling class whose members congregate in a few major cities is unprecedented in American history, though not in the history of Latin America or France or Britain. The new geography of class has two implications for champions of the non-elite working-class majority of Americans and their few overclass allies today.

Nationalism or Nothing

First, given the decline of churches and private-sector labor unions and membership-based rather than donor-based political parties, the only remaining national institution in which high-school-educated working-class Americans have any influence at all is the government. By means of their vote, ordinary people still have some partial influence over government, however diluted it may be by the influence of donors and the college-educated elite.

In contrast, the national overclass, in addition to controlling most but not all of the government, has unchecked domination of the private sector, including the media, and the nonprofit sector, including the universities and major philanthropic foundations. If the elite fails to persuade the electorate to vote for race and gender quotas in democratic referendums like California’s failed Proposition 16, then the elite will use private commercial power instead of government power to impose them, as NASDAQ has done by imposing race and gender quotas on the boards of corporations that it will list—quotas which will be filled by elite white women, as well as members of minority-group elites.

From this it follows that smaller-government conservatism is inimical to the interests of the working-class majority of all races, whose champions need to increase their power in the only institution they influence, the government, and wield it aggressively on behalf of ordinary Americans to check the abuses of concentrated private power of oligarchs in business, media, and the nonprofit and academic sectors.

Second, the battle must be for control of the federal government and the institutions of national government power. It is a delusion to believe that a hostile national elite, in charge of the national government, will nevertheless allow dissenters and enemies to shelter behind states’ rights or localism. In the United States of 1820, when states’ rights protected Northern antislavery activists against the Southern slaveholders who controlled federal offices most of the time in that era, defensive localism might have been possible. In 2020 defensive localism is anachronistic.

Anti-government conservatism is not the answer to the threat posed to the values and interests of America’s transracial working-class majority by overclass control of all sectors, including the private sector and the nonprofit sector. On the contrary, mindless anti-statism threatens to throw away the only instrument available to the American working-class majority for defending its values and interests against the ongoing managerial revolution from above—democratic government.

In the centralized United City-State of America, the inhabitants of the outer boroughs cannot secede. They have no choice but to fight to control city hall or lose by default.

Michael Lind is the author of The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution.

In “Remembering Henry Hazlitt”, Bettina Bien Greaves lays out Hazlitt’s importance. However, something important was left out of that account. Out of some 10 million words he wrote, nothing of what he said about liberty was included. Therefore, to provide a taste of some of the words that made Hazlitt so important, consider just a few:

“Liberty is the essential basis, the sine qua non, of morality.”

“Those of us who place a high value on human liberty…find ourselves in a minority (and it sometimes seems hopeless minority) in ideology…we are the true adherents of liberty…who believed in limited government, in the maximization of liberty for the individual and the minimization of the coercion to the lowest point compatible with law and order. It is because we are the true liberals that we believe in free trade, free markets, free enterprise, private property in the means of production; in brief, that we are for capitalism and against socialism…”

“The ‘private sector’ of the economy is, in fact the voluntary sector…the ‘public sector’ is, in fact, the coercive sector.”

“The future of human liberty…means the future of civilization.”

“Only if the modern state can be held within a strictly limited agenda…can it be prevented from regimenting, conquering, and ultimately devouring the society which gave it birth.”

“I’ve been preaching liberty against coercion; I’ve been preaching this doctrine in every form without any excuse, and yet the world is more socialized than when I began…”

“The ideas which now pass for brilliant innovations and advances are in fact mere revivals of ancient errors, and a further proof of the dictum that those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it.”

“There is a passion built into a very large number of men to rule over others. In established democracies this takes the form of candidates for office determined to outbid their rivals in promising handouts or other favors to pressure groups in their districts at the expense of some unnamed minority.”

“Government has nothing to give them without first taking it away from somebody else—or from themselves.”

“The mounting burden of taxation not only undermines individual incentives to increased work and earnings, but in a score of ways discourages capital accumulation and distorts, unbalances, and shrinks production. Total real wealth and income is made smaller than it would otherwise be. On net balance there is more poverty rather than less.”

“The ‘conquest of poverty’ is a product of the capitalist system which protected private property…”

“Government can’t give us anything without depriving us of something else.”

“[Forgotten are] the ones who are always called upon to stanch the politician’s bleeding heart by paying for his vicarious generosity.”

“The first requisite of a sound monetary system is that it put the least possible power over the quantity or quality of money in the hands of the politicians.”

“Capitalism, the system of private property and free markets, is not only a system of freedom and of natural justice — which tends in spite of exceptions to distribute rewards in accordance with production — but it is a great co-operative and creative system that has produced for our generation an affluence that our ancestors did not dare dream of. The superior freedom of the capitalist system, its superior justice, and its superior productivity are not three superiorities, but one. The justice follows from the freedom and the productivity follows from the freedom and the justice.”

Henry Hazlitt’s most famous line, from Economics in One Lesson, is that: “The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing that policy not merely for one group but for all groups. By itself, that recognition, echoing Frederic Bastiat, is an important antidote to the recycled errors in understanding government and its effects that he continually battled. But his recognition of liberty as the only approach that can ultimately benefit all groups was just as important. And in a world where, unfortunately, those errors have just been pursued with ever more resources taken from others without their consent, his words are certainly no less important today.”

Descriptive terms which people use are often quite misleading. In talking about modern captains of industry and leaders of big business, for instance, they call a man a “chocolate king” or a “cotton king” or an “automobile king.” Their use of such terminology implies that they see practically no difference between the modern heads of industry and those feudal kings, dukes or lords of earlier days. But the difference is in fact very great, for a chocolate king does not rule at all; he serves. He does not reign over conquered territory, independent of the market, independent of his customers. The chocolate king—or the steel king or the automobile king or any other king of modern industry—depends on the industry he operates and on the customers he serves. This “king” must stay in the good graces of his subjects, the consumers; he loses his “kingdom” as soon as he is no longer in a position to give his customers better service and provide it at lower cost than others with whom he must compete.

Two hundred years ago, before the advent of capitalism, a man’s social status was fixed from the beginning to the end of his life; he inherited it from his ancestors, and it never changed. If he was born poor, he always remained poor, and if he was born rich—a lord or a duke—he kept his dukedom and the property that went with it for the rest of his life.

As for manufacturing, the primitive processing industries of those days existed almost exclusively for the benefit of the wealthy. Most of the people (90 percent or more of the European population) worked the land and did not come in contact with the city-oriented processing industries. This rigid system of feudal society prevailed in the most developed areas of Europe for many hundreds of years.

However, as the rural population expanded, there developed a surplus of people on the land. For this surplus of population without inherited land or estates, there was not enough to do, nor was it possible for them to work in the processing industries; the kings of the cities denied them access. The numbers of these “outcasts” continued to grow, and still no one knew what to do with them. They were, in the full sense of the word, “proletarians,” outcasts whom the government could only put into the workhouse or the poorhouse. In some sections of Europe, especially in the Netherlands and in England, they became so numerous that, by the 18th century, they were a real menace to the preservation of the prevailing social system.

Today, in discussing similar conditions in places like India or other developing countries, we must not forget that, in 18th-century England, conditions were much worse. At that time, England had a population of 6 or 7 million people, but of those 6 or 7 million people, more than 1 million, probably 2 million, were simply poor outcasts for whom the existing social system made no provision. What to do with these outcasts was one of the great problems of 18th-century England.

Another great problem was the lack of raw materials. The British, very seriously, had to ask themselves this question: What are we going to do in the future, when our forests will no longer give us the wood we need for our industries and for heating our houses? For the ruling classes it was a desperate situation. The statesmen did not know what to do, and the ruling gentry were absolutely without any ideas on how to improve conditions.

Out of this serious social situation emerged the beginnings of modern capitalism. There were some persons among those outcasts, among those poor people, who tried to organize others to set up small shops which could produce something. This was an innovation. These innovators did not produce expensive goods suitable only for the upper classes; they produced cheaper products for everyone’s needs. And this was the origin of capitalism as it operates today. It was the beginning of mass production, the fundamental principle of capitalistic industry. Whereas the old processing industries serving the rich people in the cities had existed almost exclusively for the demands of the upper classes, the new capitalist industries began to produce things that could be purchased by the general population. It was mass production to satisfy the needs of the masses.

This is the fundamental principle of capitalism as it exists today in all of those countries in which there is a highly developed system of mass production: Big business, the target of the most fanatic attacks by the so-called leftists, produces almost exclusively to satisfy the wants of the masses. Enterprises producing luxury goods solely for the well-to-do can never attain the magnitude of big businesses. And today, it is the people who work in large factories who are the main consumers of the products made in those factories. This is the fundamental difference between the capitalistic principles of production and the feudalistic principles of the preceding ages.

When people assume, or claim, that there is a difference between the producers and the consumers of the products of big businesses, they are badly mistaken. In American department stores you hear the slogan, “the customer is always right.” And this customer is the same man who produces in the factory those things which are sold in the department stores. The people who think that the power of big business is enormous are mistaken also, since big business depends entirely on the patronage of those who buy its products: the biggest enterprise loses its power and its influence when it loses its customers.

Fifty or 60 years ago it was said in almost all capitalist countries that the railroad companies were too big and too powerful; they had a monopoly; it was impossible to compete with them. It was alleged that, in the field of transportation, capitalism had already reached a stage at which it had destroyed itself, for it had eliminated competition. What people overlooked was the fact that the power of the railroads depended on their ability to serve people better than any other method of transportation. Of course it would have been ridiculous to compete with one of these big railroad companies by building another railroad parallel to the old line, since the old line was sufficient to serve existing needs. But very soon there came other competitors. Freedom of competition does not mean that you can succeed simply by imitating or copying precisely what someone else has done. Freedom of the press does not mean that you have the right to copy what another man has written and thus to acquire the success which this other man has duly merited on account of his achievements. It means that you have the right to write something different. Freedom of competition concerning railroads, for example, means that you are free to invent something, to do something, which will challenge the railroads and place them in a very precarious competitive situation.

In the United States the competition to the railroads—in the form of buses, automobiles, trucks, and airplanes—has caused the railroads to suffer and to be almost completely defeated, as far as passenger transportation is concerned.

The development of capitalism consists in everyone’s having the right to serve the customer better and/or more cheaply. And this method, this principle, has, within a comparatively short time, transformed the whole world. It has made possible an unprecedented increase in world population.

In 18th-century England, the land could support only 6 million people at a very low standard of living. Today more than 50 million people enjoy a much higher standard of living than even the rich enjoyed during the 18th-century. And today’s standard of living in England would probably be still higher, had not a great deal of the energy of the British been wasted in what were, from various points of view, avoidable political and military “adventures.”

These are the facts about capitalism. Thus, if an Englishman—or, for that matter, any other man in any country of the world—says today to his friends that he is opposed to capitalism, there is a wonderful way to answer him: “You know that the population of this planet is now ten times greater than it was in the ages preceding capitalism; you know that all men today enjoy a higher standard of living than your ancestors did before the age of capitalism. But how do you know that you are the one out of ten who would have lived in the absence of capitalism? The mere fact that you are living today is proof that capitalism has succeeded, whether or not you consider your own life very valuable.”

In spite of all its benefits, capitalism has been furiously attacked and criticized. It is necessary that we understand the origin of this antipathy. It is a fact that the hatred of capitalism originated not with the masses, not among the workers themselves, but among the landed aristocracy—the gentry, the nobility, of England and the European continent. They blamed capitalism for something that was not very pleasant for them: at the beginning of the 19th century, the higher wages paid by industry to its workers forced the landed gentry to pay equally higher wages to their agricultural workers. The aristocracy attacked the industries by criticizing the standard of living of the masses of the workers.

Of course, from our viewpoint, the workers’ standard of living was extremely low; conditions under early capitalism were absolutely shocking, but not because the newly developed capitalistic industries had harmed the workers. The people hired to work in factories had already been existing at a virtually subhuman level.

The famous old story, repeated hundreds of times, that the factories employed women and children and that these women and children, before they were working in factories, had lived under satisfactory conditions, is one of the greatest falsehoods of history. The mothers who worked in the factories had nothing to cook with; they did not leave their homes and their kitchens to go into the factories, they went into factories because they had no kitchens, and if they had a kitchen they had no food to cook in those kitchens. And the children did not come from comfortable nurseries. They were starving and dying. And all the talk about the so-called unspeakable horror of early capitalism can be refuted by a single statistic: precisely in these years in which British capitalism developed, precisely in the age called the Industrial Revolution in England, in the years from 1760 to 1830, precisely in those years the population of England doubled, which means that hundreds or thousands of children—who would have died in preceding times—survived and grew to become men and women.

There is no doubt that the conditions of the preceding times were very unsatisfactory. It was capitalist business that improved them. It was precisely those early factories that provided for the needs of their workers, either directly or indirectly by exporting products and importing food and raw materials from other countries. Again and again, the early historians of capitalism have—one can hardly use a milder word—falsified history.

One anecdote they used to tell, quite possibly invented, involved Benjamin Franklin. According to the story, Ben Franklin visited a cotton mill in England, and the owner of the mill told him, full of pride: “Look, here are cotton goods for Hungary.” Benjamin Franklin, looking around, seeing that the workers were shabbily dressed, said: “Why don’t you produce also for your own workers?”

But those exports of which the owner of the mill spoke really meant that he did produce for his own workers, because England had to import all its raw materials. There was no cotton either in England or in continental Europe. There was a shortage of food in England, and food had to be imported from Poland, from Russia, from Hungary. These exports were the payment for the imports of the food which made the survival of the British population possible. Many examples from the history of those ages will show the attitude of the gentry and aristocracy toward the workers. I want to cite only two examples. One is the famous British “Speenhamland” system. By this system, the British government paid all workers who did not get the minimum wage (determined by the government) the difference between the wages they received and this minimum wage. This saved the landed aristocracy the trouble of paying higher wages. The gentry would pay the traditionally low agricultural wage, and the government would supplement it, thus keeping workers from leaving rural occupations to seek urban factory employment.

Eighty years later, after capitalism’s expansion from England to continental Europe, the landed aristocracy again reacted against the new production system. In Germany the Prussian Junkers, having lost many workers to the higher-paying capitalistic industries, invented a special term for the problem: “flight from the countryside”—Landflucht. And in the German Parliament, they discussed what might be done against this evil, as it was seen from the point of view of the landed aristocracy.

Prince Bismarck, the famous chancellor of the German Reich, in a speech one day said, “I met a man in Berlin who once had worked on my estate, and I asked this man, ‘Why did you leave the estate; why did you go away from the country; why are you now living in Berlin?'” And according to Bismarck, this man answered, “You don’t have such a nice Biergarten in the village as we have here in Berlin, where you can sit, drink beer, and listen to music.” This is, of course, a story told from the point of view of Prince Bismarck, the employer. It was not the point of view of all his employees. They went into industry because industry paid them higher wages and raised their standard of living to an unprecedented degree.

Today, in the capitalist countries, there is relatively little difference between the basic life of the so-called higher and lower classes; both have food, clothing, and shelter. But in the 18th century and earlier, the difference between the man of the middle class and the man of the lower class was that the man of the middle class had shoes and the man of the lower class did not have shoes. In the United States today the difference between a rich man and a poor man means very often only the difference between a Cadillac and a Chevrolet. The Chevrolet may be bought secondhand, but basically it renders the same services to its owner: he, too, can drive from one point to another. More than 50 percent of the people in the United States are living in houses and apartments they own themselves.

The attacks against capitalism—especially with respect to the higher wage rates—start from the false assumption that wages are ultimately paid by people who are different from those who are employed in the factories. Now it is all right for economists and for students of economic theories to distinguish between the worker and the consumer and to make a distinction between them. But the fact is that every consumer must, in some way or the other, earn the money he spends, and the immense majority of the consumers are precisely the same people who work as employees in the enterprises that produce the things which they consume. Wage rates under capitalism are not set by a class of people different from the class of people who earn the wages; they are the same people. It is not the Hollywood film corporation that pays the wages of a movie star; it is the people who pay admission to the movies. And it is not the entrepreneur of a boxing match who pays the enormous demands of the prize fighters; it is the people who pay admission to the fight. Through the distinction between the employer and the employee, a distinction is drawn in economic theory, but it is not a distinction in real life; here, the employer and the employee ultimately are one and the same person.

There are people in many countries who consider it very unjust that a man who has to support a family with several children will receive the same salary as a man who has only himself to take care of. But the question is not whether the employer should bear greater responsibility for the size of a worker’s family.

The question we must ask in this case is, Are you, as an individual, prepared to pay more for something, let us say, a loaf of bread, if you are told that the man who produced this loaf of bread has six children? The honest man will certainly answer in the negative and say, “In principle I would, but in fact if it costs less I would rather buy the bread produced by a man without any children.” The fact is that, if the buyers do not pay the employer enough to enable him to pay his workers, it becomes impossible for the employer to remain in business.

The capitalist system was termed “capitalism” not by a friend of the system, but by an individual who considered it to be the worst of all historical systems, the greatest evil that had ever befallen mankind. That man was Karl Marx. Nevertheless, there is no reason to reject Marx’s term, because it describes clearly the source of the great social improvements brought about by capitalism. Those improvements are the result of capital accumulation; they are based on the fact that people, as a rule, do not consume everything they have produced, that they save—and invest—a part of it. There is a great deal of misunderstanding about this problem and—in the course of these lectures—I will have the opportunity to deal with the most fundamental misapprehensions which people have concerning the accumulation of capital, the use of capital, and the universal advantages to be gained from such use. I will deal with capitalism particularly in my lectures about foreign investment and about that most critical problem of present-day politics, inflation. You know, of course, that inflation exists not only in this country. It is a problem all over the world today.

An often-unrealized fact about capitalism is this: savings mean benefits for all those who are anxious to produce or to earn wages. When a man has accrued a certain amount of money—let us say, $1,000—and, instead of spending it, entrusts these dollars to a savings bank or an insurance company, the money goes into the hands of an entrepreneur, a businessman, enabling him to go out and embark on a project which could not have been embarked on yesterday, because the required capital was unavailable.

What will the businessman do now with the additional capital? The first thing he must do, the first use he will make of this additional capital, is to go out and hire workers and buy raw materials—in turn causing a further demand for workers and raw materials to develop, as well as a tendency toward higher wages and higher prices for raw materials. Long before the saver or the entrepreneur obtains any profit from all of this, the unemployed worker, the producer of raw materials, the farmer, and the wage earner are all sharing in the benefits of the additional savings.

When the entrepreneur will get something out of the project depends on the future state of the market and on his ability to anticipate correctly the future state of the market. But the workers as well as the producers of raw materials get the benefits immediately. Much was said, 30 or 40 years ago, about the “wage policy,” as they called it, of Henry Ford. One of Mr. Ford’s great accomplishments was that he paid higher wages than did other industrialists or factories. His wage policy was described as an “invention,” yet it is not enough to say that this new “invented” policy was the result of the liberality of Mr. Ford. A new branch of business, or a new factory in an already existing branch of business, has to attract workers from other employments, from other parts of the country, even from other countries. And the only way to do this is to offer the workers higher wages for their work. This is what took place in the early days of capitalism, and it is still taking place today.

When the manufacturers in Great Britain first began to produce cotton goods, they paid their workers more than they had earned before. Of course, a great percentage of these new workers had earned nothing at all before that and were prepared to take anything they were offered. But after a short time—when more and more capital was accumulated and more and more new enterprises were developed—wage rates went up, and the result was the unprecedented increase in British population which I spoke of earlier.

The scornful depiction of capitalism by some people as a system designed to make the rich become richer and the poor become poorer is wrong from beginning to end. Marx’s thesis regarding the coming of socialism was based on the assumption that workers were getting poorer, that the masses were becoming more destitute, and that finally all the wealth of a country would be concentrated in a few hands or in the hands of one man only. And then the masses of impoverished workers would finally rebel and expropriate the riches of the wealthy proprietors. According to this doctrine of Karl Marx, there can be no opportunity, no possibility within the capitalistic system for any improvement of the conditions of the workers.

In 1864, speaking before the International Workingmen’s Association in England, Marx said the belief that labor unions could improve conditions for the working population was “absolutely in error.” The union policy of asking for higher wage rates and shorter work hours he called conservative—conservatism being, of course, the most condemnatory term which Karl Marx could use. He suggested that the unions set themselves a new, revolutionary goal: that they “do away with the wage system altogether,” that they substitute “socialism”—government ownership of the means of production—for the system of private ownership.

If we look upon the history of the world, and especially upon the history of England since 1865, we realize that Marx was wrong in every respect. There is no Western, capitalistic country in which the conditions of the masses have not improved in an unprecedented way. All these improvements of the last 80 or 90 years were made in spite of the prognostications of Karl Marx. For the Marxian socialists believed that the conditions of the workers could never be ameliorated. They followed a false theory, the famous “iron law of wages”—the law which stated that a worker’s wages, under capitalism, would not exceed the amount he needed to sustain his life for service to the enterprise.

The Marxians formulated their theory in this way: if the workers’ wage rates go up, raising wages above the subsistence level, they will have more children; and these children, when they enter the labor force, will increase the number of workers to the point where the wage rates will drop, bringing the workers once more down to the subsistence level—to that minimal sustenance level which will just barely prevent the working population from dying out. But this idea of Marx, and of many other socialists, is a concept of the working man precisely like that which biologists use—and rightly so—in studying the life of animals. Of mice, for instance.

If you increase the quantity of food available for animal organisms or for microbes, then more of them will survive. And if you restrict their food, then you will restrict their numbers. But man is different. Even the worker—in spite of the fact that Marxists do not acknowledge it—has human wants other than food and reproduction of his species. An increase in real wages results not only in an increase in population; it results also, and first of all, in an improvement in the average standard of living. That is why today we have a higher standard of living in Western Europe and in the United States than in the developing nations of, say, Africa.

We must realize, however, that this higher standard of living depends on the supply of capital. This explains the difference between conditions in the United States and conditions in India; modern methods of fighting contagious diseases have been introduced in India—at least, to some extent—and the effect has been an unprecedented increase in population, but, since this increase in population has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the amount of capital invested, the result has been an increase in poverty. A country becomes more prosperous in proportion to the rise in the invested capital per unit of its population.

I hope that in my other lectures I will have the opportunity to deal in greater detail with these problems and will be able to clarify them, because some terms—such as “the capital invested per capita”—require a rather detailed explanation.

But you have to remember that, in economic policies, there are no miracles. You have read in many newspapers and speeches, about the so-called German economic miracle—the recovery of Germany after its defeat and destruction in the Second World War. But this was no miracle. It was the application of the principles of the free market economy, of the methods of capitalism, even though they were not applied completely in all respects. Every country can experience the same “miracle” of economic recovery, although I must insist that economic recovery does not come from a miracle; it comes from the adoption of—and is the result of—sound economic policies.

Author:

Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises was the acknowledged leader of the Austrian school of economic thought, a prodigious originator in economic theory, and a prolific author. Mises’s writings and lectures encompassed economic theory, history, epistemology, government, and political philosophy. His contributions to economic theory include important clarifications on the quantity theory of money, the theory of the trade cycle, the integration of monetary theory with economic theory in general, and a demonstration that socialism must fail because it cannot solve the problem of economic calculation. Mises was the first scholar to recognize that economics is part of a larger science in human action, a science that he called praxeology.

You can tell that the US presidential election was stolen the same way that you can tell that Covid is being hyped to serve an agenda. The way you know is that no explanation is permitted other than the official explanation.

Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and the presstitute print, TV, and NPR media censor all information that indicates a stolen election. Not even neutral election experts heavily armed with facts, and witnesses who have signed sworn affidavits under penalty of perjury, are interviewed by the presstitute media or permitted to post documentation of electoral fraud on social media. It is simply out of the question to give any hearing to evidence. Some Democrats and presstitutes have even called for the arrest of anyone who says Biden did not win or might not have won if the evidence could be weighed. They want to make challenging the official explanation a crime subject to imprisonment, just as in some Western countries any stated opinion or evidence contrary to the official Holocaust story results in a prison sentence.

The same for Covid. As far as I can tell there are more virologists, immunologists, and epidemiologists who question the seriousness of Covid than there are who see Covid as a threat that justifies lockdowns, mask mandates, and punishment for noncompliance. Yet, the dissenting experts are not permitted to present their evidence to the public. Keep in mind that Fauci and Redfield are not great scientists; they are merely administrators of public health organizations. They are not on the same level as their critics.

Think about it for a minute. In neither of the two most important issues currently affecting the United States—indeed, one could say the Western world—the validity of the US presidential election and the reality of the Covid threat—is there any public debate.

Doesn’t it strike you as odd that only one opinion—the official opinion—is permitted. The two most important issues of our time only have official explanations. The public is not permitted the expert dissenting opinion. This doesn’t bother you?

You would think that there would be a variety of views about such important subjects and that evidence would be presented and carefully evaluated. Instead, all debate is foreclosed. Only the official explanation is permitted.

This suggests that the evidence for Biden’s win and for a Covid threat that justifies an economic holocaust is suspect and cannot stand the light of day. Therefore, no debate is permitted in order to protect the lie.

An uninformed reader might say that the courts have examined the evidence and have rejected the evidence of electoral fraud as insubstantial. And, indeed, the reader would have to be uninformed or misled by the lies of the presstitute media.

The fact is this: No court has examined the evidence. No state court and not the US Supreme Court. The reason that the courts have not accepted the cases is that they do not want to have to examine the evidence, because the evidence clearly establishes that the election was stolen and that the theft was carefully planned in advance. The state courts in the swing states where the election was stolen are protecting the Democrats. The US Supreme Court refused to accept the case on the grounds that Texas did not have standing to bring a case. Clearly, there has been no judicial ruling on the evidence that the election was legitimate. The US Supreme Court will protect the Establishment and the Establishment’s reputation before it will protect electoral integrity.

The evidence has been refused examination by the state and federal judiciary.

So much for “American democracy.” So much for the “American Rule of Law.” No such rule exists. Law exists only for the purposes of the ruling Establishment. Power, not law, rules in America.

The US Supreme Court is an Establishment institution. It makes controversial rulings only when it has the media on its side.

Note that Hunter Biden’s laptop, which we know for a fact indicates both his and his father’s corruption in the sale of protection, is in the hands of the FBI and nothing is done about the Bidens’ criminal activity. The presstitutes claim that no such criminal activity exists. Apparently, the FBI agrees.

The protection of Hunter Biden is necessary to protect the “president elect.” Hunter will get away with his ill-gained millions of dollars, and his father will get way with his share.

Justice in America no longer exists. “Justice” is the retribution reserved for truth-tellers like Manning and Julian Assange, and “justice” means persecution and frame-up of those inconvenient for the Establishment even if the framed-up person is the President of the United States. Coverup for the Establishment and you will be rich. Criticize their growing power over American citizens and you will be made an example of what happens to those who are non-compliant.

This is America today.

But it is also the Western World today.

It is the same in Germany, for example. Germany has closed down the German economy based on allegations of a Covid threat — https://www.rt.com/news/509535-germany-new-lockdown-christmas/ . There is little scientific basis for this drastic policy, and a great deal of evidence against it. The German people themselves have strongly protested against it to no avail.

Our world is one of controlled explanations. Consider the large number. For examples there are President Kennedy’s assassination, Martin Luther King’s assassination, Robert Kennedy’s assassination, the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, 9/11, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of Chemical weapons, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Iranian nukes, Russiagate and the other orchestrated charges against President Trump.

The Western World emerged from the fall of the Roman World and the uncertainties of the Middle Age to become eventually a civilization based in science and evidence. But today evidence no longer counts. What counts in the Western World today is emotion. If you have the correct emotions, you are “woke” and know that Western Civilization is racist and misogynist and imperialist and that its white inhabitants are “systemic racists” who oppress black people for racist reasons. You know that the evil of the white race necessitates their overthrowing. If you are a white person, you are put in a position where “social justice” requires you to be put into a lower legal class with less rights. It is not considered hate speech to declare that whiteness must be erased.

The problem for the Western World is that many white people agree with their indictment. Deracinated white people lack the confidence to defend themselves, their history, monuments, and achievements.

In a diverse, multicultural society, deracinated races have little prospect. The defense of whiteness is defined as racist and this is used to prevent the rise of leaders who would restore white confidence. Jean Raspail’s novel, The Camp of the Saints, foretold the future of white peoples.

Paul Craig Roberts, UNZ Review

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

~ William Shakespeare, Virginia Mason Vaughan, Alden T. Vaughan (1999). “The Tempest: Third Series”, p.164, Cengage Learning EMEA

Imagine a time of total isolation, of loss of family and familiar contact, of hiding away from life, of covering up all emotion, of psychological torture, of starving due to extreme poverty initiated and enforced by state thugs, of loss of all movement, of 24 hour a day surveillance, of death by state mandate, or imagine having to make a choice to take a poisonous, controlling, and deadly vaccine or be locked away from living. This dystopian nightmare is already here, but it has just begun, and if left to the desires of the evil controlling devils in power, it will only get worse every day.

The term “heaven on earth” has seemingly lost all meaning, because any aspect of normal life and love has been destroyed, and the concept of hell on earth is now fully evident. This of course came with the loss of freedom, but the irony here is that this loss of freedom that led to this hell was voluntary. The false pandemic that was the initial impetus for our demise was universally accepted by the people supposedly due to fear, but was fear the deciding factor? It certainly was a part of the scheme and remains so today, but weakness of mind and body, cowardice in the face of challenge, laziness and dependence on others instead of self, mass indifference, herd ignorance, and in many cases sheer stupidity, won the day. This has been a planned multi-faceted breakdown of society; a breakdown that if not challenged and overcome will lead to long-term condemned misery.

What we currently face in this country has never before been imagined. Regardless of any mass dissent or pushback at this time, this will not end well. If this madness is stopped soon, we will have some semblance of normalcy, but it will take many years to get to any place that could be considered traditional in any way. In other words, so much damage to our lives and liberty has already taken place, that in order to step back in time even one year is a monumental task. Because of the scope of damage that has been done to our way of life, to our actual spirit of being, any return to ‘life as we have known it’ is not possible without enormous work and the passing of much time. If we fail in this endeavor, our fate will be sealed, and in the hands of those very same monsters that have perpetrated this crime against humanity. All that will be left will be a society made up of rulers and slaves.

The next, and maybe final, nail in the coffin of freedom will come in the form of an experimental Covid vaccine. The risk due to mass acceptance of any vaccine claiming to release the chains now wrapped around our throats is immense. The exact opposite result will be the case, and the effect of universal compliance concerning these injections will be the equivalent of still being chained but also being inside a coffin. Freedom will never be attained by obedience; it can only survive this onslaught of tyranny with mass disobedience. Any talk of a vaccine claimed as savior will be a lie, and can only be sold to the public through extreme and continuous propaganda campaigns that are meant to achieve submission. Submitting to rule with the promise of freedom as bait is only a strategy for fools.

The ramping up of scare tactics, of mainstream media fear mongering, of spurious and overblown headlines, and of threats, are the tools of deception, and should never be taken seriously. These are targeted not toward individuals with the ability to think critically, but toward the masses that more easily surrender to a herd mentality. This is done because the herd is the vast majority, and gaining power over them through these dishonest and deceitful means is a way to gain control of all, for if the group is co-opted, the dissenters can be more easily silenced. Once a free society succumbs to this trickery, it becomes a captured society.

As Americans continue to follow orders, to wash the very skin off their bodies with toxic ‘disinfectants’, to wear harmful masks, to distance from loved ones and friends, to stay locked up in their homes instead of working to support themselves and their families, to quarantining on demand, to refusing to open up their businesses, and to lining up like sheep going to slaughter to take a bogus Covid test, they are simply getting closer and closer to becoming slaves. By acquiescing to the very system they voluntarily allow to rule over them, they will become nothing more than brain-dead zombies of a future communistic and technocratic state apparatus. This is what is planned for them, but they have not the ability to see the truth staring them in the face. This is a very serious dilemma, because real education in order to find the truth is vital for their survival, but they seem only to look toward their chosen masters for answers.

This human experiment continues to go forward, mostly without resistance. The vaccine that is coming was most likely developed long ago; years in fact, sitting idle until the timing was right for its release. That release may signal the final stage of this plot to take over humanity, because it could have every element necessary in order for the state to gain total control. It could at one time be used to infect a large portion of the population by introducing pathogens and possibly microbes capable of compromising the human immune system. It could also be used to inject biosensors, barcodes for tracking, nanoparticle agents that would be brain altering, and any other number of gene-altering techniques through m-RNA and DNA changing technologies now being actively pursued. The range of possibilities is limitless, and contrary to state denials of these possibilities, they do indeed exist.

As discussed on many occasions, the only solution to this dire situation is mass dissent and total disobedience to any government order. This requires the courage to not only take the risks necessary to gain your freedom back, but the willingness to defend your family, friends, and yourself from any government intrusion at all cost. Majority complacency will only serve to destroy this country from the inside, and any freedom that ever existed will be destroyed with it.

Gary D. Barnett, lewrockwell.com

If you have loved ones who died in 2020, it’s an unspeakably sad thing, and nothing (so far) surpasses that loss. There are also things we ALL lost in 2020. These include, but are not limited to:

1) the Bill of Rights, even nominally;

2) any sense of rationality or sanity in our culture, even a superficial one;

3) the ability to trust elections, including presidential ones;

4) New York City;

5) California (for its commercial enterprise, the one worthwhile thing about it);

6) doctor relationships in person;

7) restaurants, bars, nightclubs, even outdoor dining;

8) sports games;

9) musical concerts;

10) plays, including Broadway (maybe not coming back ever);

11) any hope of remaining friends with people of differing political views;

12) the Supreme Court;

13) freedom of association, including religion;

14) the ease of travel across state lines or internationally, with few or no issues;

15) the right NOT to wear a face diaper into a grocery or retail store.

Did I leave anything out?

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

It’s looking pretty grim right now regarding President Trump’s chances of getting the four more years he deserves, and that he almost certainly would have received had the Democrats’ cheating game not gone to all time high levels.  It’s also looking like justice and honesty are going to play a diminishing role in the United States for the foreseeable future, as evidently about forty or so percent of the country is perfectly comfortable with massive voter fraud and willing to participate in it, all because they wanted to have their own way. 

With that, it also looks like we are on our way towards a pretty heavy dose of socialism as the Left is now emboldened by their brazen acts of fraud and encouraged by the fact that even SCOTUS does not seem willing to challenge their crimes.  The Ocasio-Cortezes and Bernie Sanderses and Kamala Harrises of the world already have grand plans to take this country in the direction of Cuba and Venezuela, and now there will be very little to stand in their way… politically, anyway.  We also know that the mainstream media will be eagerly willing participants, feeding us lie after lie, and Hollywood will pump out their own versions of the propaganda.  Even as the country burns, they will celebrate how great things are now that evil Orange Man is not in the White House any longer.

With all the recent talk about viruses and vaccines, I started thinking about the disease that is socialism and what it would take for a country to survive it and to develop an immunity to it going forward.  Socialism has left a path of destruction in its wake everywhere it has been attempted.  (I include communism in this discussion, since it is a close cousin of socialism, and has a similar murderous and miserable history).  However, it has so far left the United States relatively unscathed.  Sure, there are some things that are run in a socialist way here in the U.S., such as ObamaCare, the public school system and Medicare, to name just a few, and more than enough wealth redistribution schemes, principal among them being our U.S. Tax Code.  But by and large, we are still a capitalist and free country.

There is an entire generation, multiple generations really, that have been taught that capitalism is evil and that socialism and communism are the answer to all of society’s problems.  These mindless drones have issued forth like locusts from our colleges and universities to spread their madness around the country.  No longer do they mature out of this idiocy as they encounter the harsh realities of life like they once might have.  No, partly because of social media that censors any facts that threaten their myopic worldview and partly because their parents have raised them in a world where they are never challenged, these snowflakes are very unlikely to ever see the horrifying truth about socialism.

question is, like with a vaccine, Do we need to get a little bit of the disease in our system to be able to able to defeat it? What I mean is, do we need these dopes to actually experience the truth about socialism in order for them to ever believe how evil and worthless it truly is?  If there was ever a country with the ability to overcome such an infection, I believe it would be the United States. 

All throughout this great land, we have patriots who are willing to fight, to be the antibodiesneeded to ward off the disease.  We have people like James O’Keefe and other independent and honest journalists who are actually digging to find the truth.  We have a very few honest and patriotic politicians who are willing to fight for that silly old rag called the Constitution and we have the veritable armies of regular Americans whom we’ve seen showing up at Trump rallies and boat parades and fighting back against Antifa.  Would these forces of good be enough?  

Don’t get me wrong, I have no interest or desire to go down the rabbit hole of socialism any more than we already have, but I’m not sure that there is another way to change the hearts and minds of those committed to it… other than outright civil war, that is.  If there is a way, I’m all ears.  I would say that the first thing we need to do is restore integrity and honesty to our election system, but if President Trump fails to do this, I believe that it may be hopeless.  I don’t believe that the GOP has the spine (or other body parts) to fight to reestablish our faith in voting, and if I’m right that means the Democrats will continue with their shenanigans and will remain firmly in control of almost everything. 

Maybe the best we can do is to continue with the preventive measures we have and keep up the fight.  As with preventing other illnesses, we can keep taking our vitamins C and D (standing for capitalism and democracy, conveniently for my argument) and try to maintain our relative health.  But as with any truly nasty disease, these measures may only delay the inevitable spread; I hope it’s not like with chicken pox, where we have to let ourselves be exposed to it so that we can fight it off early.  

I believe we are at a very important point in our country’s history; a Battle of Midway type of moment, where the tides may turn one way or the other based on the outcome.  Even if the tide doesn’t turn in our favor, this is a battle that we must continue.  We may very well lose this current battle for the White House and thus be blasted in the face with socialism germs, as from an uncovered sneeze.  The time is coming when our mettle will be tested and we will see how well our immune system will respond.  

H.P. Smith, American Thinker

I knew there would be massive election fraud. The Trump team knew as well. Most patriots knew it was coming. But nobody that I’ve talked to or heard from had any idea it was going to be THIS massive. In fact, what I defined as “massive” when describing what was coming ahead of the election was put to complete shame by the real thing. We were blindsided, not by the fact that there was massive fraud but by the degree of collusion that went into pulling it off.

This was a conspiracy. And no, I’m not referring to what many now consider the pejorative “conspiracy theory” that is used to tag anyone who espouses thoughts that fall outside of the mainstream. This was a true conspiracy, arguably the most widespread we’ve seen in our nation’s history, and the list of people, groups, and organizations that have or had their hands in it boggles the mind.

Knowing there would be massive voter fraud, I put the President’s chances of election at 90%. I knew he would legitimately win; only a fool would think Joe Biden and Kamala Harris earned more than the die-hard Establishment Democrat vote, plus a handful of NeverTrump votes. My 10% worth of caution was based on the possibility that something bigger than we’ve ever seen could happen. And it did. But here’s the thing. The fact that they had to scramble in the dark hours after election night to squeeze out even more massive voter fraud gave me hope. It was as if they’d committed such overt fraud at the end to make up the distance from President Trump’s landslide that there was no way it wouldn’t be exposed.

We knew mainstream media would play their role as voter fraud debunkers, but the evidence is overwhelming. We knew Big Tech would put their thumbs, fingers, palms, arms, and the rest of their bodies on the scale to suppress information about it all. We knew the Deep State was going to be involved. We even suspected that foreign entities from the Chinese Communist Party to George Soros would play a role.

What we didn’t expect is that they would commit everything they had to the cause. All of it. They were like the fallen angels discussed in the non-canonical Book of Enoch who gave up everything for a taste of flesh and to pollute the creation. The difference between their tale and what we’re seeing unfold before our eyes is that God in omniscient. We are not. We prepared as best we could for the voter fraud that was coming and after the fact we’ve continued to do everything we can to expose it, but the forces aligned against us are much more powerful than most of us expected.

Many were also surprised to learn that some of our “allies” were working against us the whole time. From Fox News to the Daily Caller to Attorney General William Barr to the “unbiased” judiciary to Senate Republicans, we’ve been stabbed in the back from more angles than I thought was possible.

On a couple of occasions ahead of the election I referred to the only thing capable of stealing this election, namely the works of the “powers and principalities” discussed in Ephesians 6:12. I said if we were fighting against flesh and blood among Democrats, then we would either win with the landslide or if they extended themselves enough to fully steal it, then we would easily expose them. More and more, I’m convinced that my irrational fear of powerful dark forces working against us was and is actually in play.

With all that said, I’m still 90% sure President Trump will win. But it won’t be because of anything he does. It won’t be his attorneys or Sidney Powell or Lin Wood. It won’t be because of a group of legislators coming together to do the right thing. All of those things may play a part, but it will only be through the protection and divine action of God that all of it can come together in time. He may use us. He may use Rudy Giuliani or someone else. He may do something we aren’t expecting at all. Or, He may allow this to happen, and if that’s the case we must accept His will with the knowledge that His plan is righteous even if we think we know best.

As I noted in an article yesterday, the story of Gideon from the Book of Judges may be what we’re seeing today. In the story, it was not through the military prowess or personal power of men that brought victory to the Israelites against the superior Midianites. It was the will of God, and to prove this He made certain there was no doubt by having Gideon cut his army down from 32,000 men to a mere 300. By doing this, the glory of God was demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt. And if President Trump wins despite everything conspiring against him, it will be because God willed it to be.

These are exciting times. I know anxiety is high for the vast majority of Americans for multiple reasons, but hope should be high and faith should continue unbroken. The forces against us are strong, but we have the ultimate winner on our side.

J. D. Rucker

It was in the 1960s that the left convinced itself that there is something fascistic about patriotism and something perversely “patriotic” about running down America. Anti-Americanism – a stand-in for hatred of Western civilization – became the stuff of sophisticates and intellectuals as never before.

— Jonah Goldberg

I am among those who believe that our Western civilization is on its way to perishing. It has many commendable qualities, most of which it has borrowed from the Christian ethic, but it lacks the element of moral wisdom that would give it permanence. Future historians will record that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it.

— Aiden Wilson Tozer

What is called Western Civilization is in an advanced state of decomposition, and another Dark Ages will soon be upon us, if, indeed, it has not already begun. With the Media, especially television, governing all our lives, as they indubitably do, it is easily imaginable that this might happen without our noticing… by accustoming us to the gradual deterioration of our values.

— Malcom Muggeridge

There is no question that by nearly any metric the West is by far the most successful civilization in history. Among its many spectacular accomplishments, the West has attained affluence and material prosperity that were previously unimaginable. Its scientific advancements and technological progress seem like the stuff of science fiction. Its military power and strength are without equal. But not only do Westerners enjoy unprecedented degree of wealth, health and security, they are also guaranteed unequalled personal liberties and political rights. In short, the West has achieved what those who lived in other civilizations could only dream of. The affluence, freedoms and safety available to Westerners are by any historical measure beyond extraordinary. One clear present-day indicator of the West’s staggering success is the countless people from all over the globe willing to take great risks and pay almost any price to come and live here.

All of this notwithstanding, there is an ominous feeling, however, that we are a civilization whose days are numbered. Despite our immense wealth, technological capabilities and military power, there is a growing sense that the West is under an attack it may not be able to withstand.

This attack has not been unleashed by some powerful external enemy. Nor could it have been since no external foe is strong enough to take on this civilization. The attack has come from within. Neither was it launched suddenly. Rather it has been a progressive operation. Low level and barely perceivable in the beginning, it has been gathering in strength over a period of decades. Its initial phase could be compared to a partisan campaign with a shot taken here and there. Emboldened by a lack of proper response on the part of those it sought to subvert, the enemy expanded its field of hostilities and achieved surprising victories. Invigorated and encouraged by the gains, the foe has recently thrown away all of its disguises and has come out into the open in full force. It has shown itself stronger than most would have imagined with the result that we are now locked in an all-out battle for survival. It is an indication of our malaise that many people are still not fully aware of this.

The enemy ranks are made up of those who harbor an aversion toward their own culture and society. Of those there are many, their numbers stoked up by decades of systematic anti-western indoctrination by the schools and the media. Charging Western civilization with oppression and racism, they claim that our socio-economic system is inherently unjust. Western style liberal democracies, they allege, discriminate and exploit racial minorities, women, homosexuals, transexuals, non-binary people, multi-gender persons, cross-genders and – apart from the select elite chosen from white males – everyone else who happens to abide in the west.

Their allegations, however, are not borne out by facts. As it happens, the West was the first civilization that accorded equal rights to all those within its realms and is the only one that does so consistently. Not only does the West take special care to protect its minorities, it affords them special rights and privileges. This applies to minorities across the spectrum and encompasses race, gender, sexual orientation and whatever other minority criterion exists or may yet be discovered by the progressive illuminati. It is revealing that hundreds of millions of members of minority groups born into societies outside the Western domain are eager to leave their own countries and come to live among us. So much so that if we did not have barriers to hold them back, we would be overrun and that in short order. If we were such an unjust and oppressive civilization as it is claimed, this situation would surely not have arisen.

But facts do not seem to make much difference to these civilizational malcontents. Driven by frustration and anger that are out of kilter with reality, they do not confine themselves to mere verbal critiques but seek to translate their feelings into action. They do this by maligning and undermining the values, beliefs and institutions that have made this civilization what it is. The decades of their persistent efforts have borne fruit. Having been subjected to years of denigration and criticism, Westerners have lost confidence in the fundamental probity of their own culture. Wholesome qualities that once propelled the west to greatness – such as self-denial, deferred gratification, thrift, independence, faithfulness, devotion, etc. – are now commonly ridiculed and despised. They have been increasingly supplanted by such insalubrious tendencies as self-indulgence, pleasure seeking, victim-playing, promiscuity, vulgarity and profligacy. Because the West’s cultural and moral foundation have been undermined, the institutions they support cannot but malfunction. Schools, for instance, now routinely teach young people destructive and immoral ideas. Most importantly, they have been for years inculcating students with abhorrence for their own cultural heritage. At the same time the unceasing barrage of decadent propaganda has loosened the bonds of the nuclear family with the result that co-habitation, divorce and out of wedlock births have increased at alarming rates. Because of the general acceptance of profligacy and lack of restraint, western currencies have been steadily losing their purchasing power due to unsustainable levels of debt incurred throughout all layers of our financial system. We could go on but let us say for now that nearly all Western institutions have been – to one degree or another – impaired and marked by decline.

As a consequence of this – and because the West has lost faith in itself – we now stand as a fragile and weakened civilization. This situation has been brought about two complementary courses of action: the long-term efforts of civilizational saboteurs and the failure of the rest to protect their culture, institutions and heritage.

Emboldened by their societies’ weakness and apathy, these saboteurs feel that their final goal may be in sight. We have seen a dramatic eruption of their destructive enthusiasm in the late spring and summer of this year when they came out in force under the guise of anti-racism protests. The term saboteur does not, of course, only encompass the vandals wreaking havoc in the streets but also their enablers and protectors in the media, government, transnational organizations, academia and other institutions. In the course of this year, we watched as these players spewed a steady stream of fiery condemnations of western societies as being irredeemably racist, discriminatory and otherwise oppressive. This was naturally accompanied by calls for a radical remaking of our socio-economic model communicated through the catch phrases such as the “The Great Reset,” “The New World Order” and “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.”

Even as it has attained unprecedented levels of wealth, technological advancement and power, Western civilization finds itself today in an existential crisis and at a point of mortal danger. It is a great irony that the civilization that has provided its people with more affluence, comfort, security, freedom and rights than any other is in danger of being destroyed from within by malcontents that it itself nurtured.

“Know your enemy” said Sun Tzu in his Art of War. The great question, then, is this: what motivates these domestic subversives to act in this way? What is the source of the psychological impulses that make them hate and strike against their own societies which – although far from perfect – nevertheless belong to the most equitable and humane civilizational stream that has emerged from the currents of history?

This is the question we need to find the answer to if we hope to hold back and repulse the insidious forces that threaten the survival of what is left of Western civilization.

Vasko Kohlmayer, LewRockwell.com

Those who feel guilt over material wealth and blame business for commercializing Christmas through ‘greedy’ profit seeking should pause and ask: “What is the standard of value by which we condemn material wealth and business?”

Millions of people have just celebrated Christmas, by decorating their homes, setting up Christmas trees and lights, getting together with their families, exchanging gifts with each other, eating special foods and baking, and enjoying activities from watching movies and playing board games to skating and skiing. Christmas is a time of benevolence and goodwill, and of spending time with the loved ones and showing your appreciation for them through giving gifts. Yet many people deplore the ‘commercialization’ of Christmas and businesses profiting from the holiday-related sales, feeling guilty over the abundance of material values we get to enjoy, highlighted by the season.

I argue that such guilt—induced by the mistaken moral belief that life is about sacrificing values, not gaining and enjoying them—is completely misplaced and that business and commercialization makes Christmas better and more enjoyable.

Take my family’s Christmas holiday as an example. We spend a week around Christmas skiing—which is only possible because there are businesses that operate ski resorts, with lifts, avalanche control, slope maintenance, restaurants, and accommodation. And we couldn’t ski if it weren’t for ski equipment and clothing, all manufactured by profit-seeking companies. Let’s not forget the energy companies (mostly oil and gas and coal in my part of the world) whose products power the ski lifts, snow mobiles, and grooming machines, heat and light the ski lodges, hotels and condominiums, and provide the gas for our car (another product to make our lives better) to reach the hill. (This year, one son could only make it by flying in from another city, made possible by the existence of airlines and jet fuel). Even in our cross-country ski outings, we benefit from the ski resort’s track setting and maintenance, and the gear that makes skiing possible and enjoyable.

Now consider all the other things associated with Christmas celebrations, whether you are skiing or not: decorations, gifts, and food. Where do they come from? Thanks to profit-seeking businesses, we have many choices available, across a wide range of prices; all we have to do is to buy them (or their ingredients, as crafty people and cooks do) in physical stores or online. And thanks to profit-seeking businesses, we are involved in producing and trading their goods and services, either as employees, entrepreneurs, or investors and thus earn the money that enables us to buy the things that we need and want—that make our lives better.

Commerce and business do not ruin Christmas but improve it, by allowing us to celebrate it in the spirit of joy, benevolence and goodwill, with gifts and food, and an abundance of material values that our productivity, mostly through business, has made possible.

Those who feel guilt over material wealth and blame business for commercializing Christmas through ‘greedy’ profit seeking should pause and ask: “What is the standard of value by which we condemn material wealth and business?” By answering honestly, they would find that their standard is not human flourishing and happiness but self-sacrifice and human misery and suffering. By abandoning the latter and embracing the former, they can throw away their guilt and join the rest of us in appreciating business for making our lives better and improving our enjoyment of this special time of the year.

BY JAANA WOICESHYN, Capitalism Magazine