Reading Hayek's The Road to Serfdom: The Definitive Edition, ed. by Bruce Caldwell (University of Chicago Press, 2007), I am struck with the similarity of his work to my own. Only his is lots better.
First off, he says quite bluntly that he is writing against socialism as totalitarianism at a time when everybody else thought that capitalism was totalitarianism, and thought that the Nazis were the last gasp of capitalism! No, he says over and over, they are a variant of totalitarian socialism. All socialism is totalitarianism. He says this, knowing it's going to cost him. But he's Cassandra! And he wants to save his world! He's the only one who knows! And darn it, people listened. He saved the world. But the socialist night is ever creeping, ever crawling, like vampyre worms who promise you a world of love, and then they suck all the life blood out of you and your loves and leave you all a pile of corpses and move on, complaining you must have been too capitalistic or it would have worked out.
Hayek has the brilliance to recognize that in America the term "liberalism" was originally used as "camouflage" to disguise the socialist takeover (45). I've thought as much and have said as much, over and over. The two terms have NOTHING whatsoever to do with one another. The term "liberalism" has been used by the left to cover their totalitarian ambitions. There is nothing at all liberal about socialism.
From the right, liberalism (in the mouth of Sean Hannity, for instance) is also a disparaged term. But the anti-intellectual conservatives like Hannity and O'Reilly are useful, and what's left of true liberty is owed to them, and to the likes of them, and it is with them that we last true liberals must make an alliance. I love Rush. Not because he's some kind of genius, or someone I would like to look at poems with, or call up at night for fun, but because he's almost alone calling the socialists on their sick game. Call it McCarthyism, or whatever you like, it functions. Liberalism is almost a mirage, but let's remember that it means INDIVIDUAL liberty, both in the market and in the market of ideas. Socialism means totalitarianism. I don't know what conservative means, but it's some kind of dumb screaming at the socialists. I approve of that, no matter who is doing it, or for whatever reason.
What are we fighting for? Why were we in Vietnam? Why did we fight the Nazis? why did we have the Cold War? Stupid Bruce Springsteen in his stupid song "Born in the USA" (wow, can he sing), says we were there to "kill the yellow man." What a dumb asshole! We were there fighting on behalf of the South Vietnamese you idiot! Just as we were in S. Korea fighting on behalf of the South Koreans!
The communist left demonstrated in our streets and made us leave Vietnam.
We were fighting to prevent totalitarianism. Vietnam is today a totalitarian state. It's not as bad as North Korea, but then what is?
Hayek LIKES socialists. He was surrounded by them in academia, just as I am. They are very hard not to like. They are sweethearts and teddy bears and candy assed lollipops who haven't got the faintest idea how to dress or how to raise their own kids or even change the oil in their cars. They're completely incompetent in every arena, but they are full of love, and who can dislike it? They have no idea that their plans for a centralized state were drawn up by Mensheviks who were later slaughtered by Bolsheviks and Stalinists, and they ended up hanging from meathooks in the Gulags, or that they will in their turn, too, since history has a repetitious aspect. still, they want to plan a centralized state and deny all freedoms in the name of love!
Socialists are nice people. They don't want to ever fight wars, and they want the sheep to lie down with the lions.
The lions have news for them: it's called Pravda. That's their newspaper forked tongue: now known as the NY Times.
Socialists are not inherently vicious. They are generally decent folks. Hayek DEDICATES his book to them. I am on the other hand unable to convince a single soul that socialism is totalitarianism, or that the ruffians are coming, or that Orwell's ordeals are becoming our ideals. If I wrote until the sun burned out, I couldn't get a single person to read Hayek. Actually, there is one person I can convince to read Hayek. Me.
I've skipped around a bit, but am now on p. 65. I intend to finish up in two days. The book is only 265 pages long, and I have already read two chapters toward the middle. I'm a lousy bedbug in Bedlam, but now that I have Hayek, I feel better.
"Serfs up!" (Bob Black)
11 comments:
One thing I want to say: I don't hate Obama. I relate to him as a fellow father. I think he's a bit poetic, even. I think his two girls are cute.
I like him as a person. I think that he and his generation got duped into Marxism via their professors, and are now aligned with a sinister system that got a very good whitewashing from their profs.
I don't really hold it against them. Their black and white world (like al Franken's) is completely ridiculous, and wrong, but I see them as conditioned via a system that didn't allow them to truly think.
I believe whole new generations will come out aligned as they are with socialism, and they will destroy the country, and ultimately we will end up right back in 1984, when this all began (Orwell didn't have his dates right -- that's just about when all this really got going).
I'm at most a tiny bump about the size of a pebble on the shining path to the death of our culture.
but I think all the people who are on Obama's bandwagon: Stu, Tom, Brett, JH, and all the others, really think they are acting in the country's and the world's best interests.
The fact that it will lead to national socialism and can't go anywhere else, is a concern to me. I see the darkness. Many people are just too sunny to see where all this is heading.
Complete state control of the arts was just the beginning. It masqueraded as an attempt to help the arts. Of course the money now outranks all other arts money, so you have to get in line if you want any of that money, which means the state controls the arts.
Soon they will also control the banks, the automobile industry, higher and lower education, the medical industry, and even nature.
Nature itself will be forced to grow according to the one-party dictates of our new shining masters, who are certain of their beneficence.
The doctrine of total depravity having gone out the window, the total depravity has made itself at home. Total depravity has now been renamed getting used to your inner child.
War on other ethnic groups is now called pride in one's own group.
It's remarkable.
All criteria have gone out the window. My attempts to call them back are fruitless.
How the heck did Hayek manage to get the country to listen? That's the biggest problem. Not identifying the problems, but getting a hearing.
At any rate, having now read Hayek, I realize I am never going to have half his erudition or mental power to focus on the problems of socialism. From now on, I'm just going to cite Hayek, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel. Hayek has anticipated all my concerns, and built a powerful siege engine unlike any of the contraptions that Jack built which I've cobbled together.
You go, Hayek.
From now on, Hayek will shoulder the burdens and I am only going to cite the man, and get back to my real tasks, such as picking lint out of my navel.
i keep thinking salma hayek
salma hayek
the trials of organized religious communism are often very laborious
i may get to hayek this summer i may be able to engage you but my way of reading is more in the order of leisure i find a book or an author i let them hang out in my room for awhile and then i finally pick them up and read them...so salma hayek here i come
after i do a littel study up on IRAN
what socialists realy want is the perfect christian community where everyone is accounted for everyones talents everyones needs and everyone is dedicated to the service of others
i think without jesus the socialists turn into animals in the zoo thy want comfort and freedom but inevitabley they get restless and they can't deal with the capitalist corporate monster within...i've met some hard core activist socialists generally they are people like pete seeger who are willing to get behind a cause
the only way a community ideal can be promoted in this world is where there is a higher often ridiculously higher principle at work...socialism needs osme mystecism
republicn conservtive capitalism is so damn square all those peopel live in boxes they need the walls to be straight and the world to work for them they want it to be a well run machine they think hard work is freedom but i do think kirby you should be the spokesperson for the republicans they're looking for intelligent voices you could go on the road with the minnesota represetative michelle bachman you two would make quite a team stump for sarah palin once in awhile too
there's no doubt that socialism was like ginfizzes to the intelligentsia of the 20th century marz was big he said a lot but he didn't say enough
with true socialism you have none of the hyperextended displays of celebrity people are just people in modern capitalism there is this wierd cult of individuality adn it creates barking monsters like ruch limbaugh who get paid extraordinary amounts of dolars for talking like a froggin idjit into a microphone on the airwaves
he is the voice of americn superficial patriotism the graggle of insolence parading around like eloquence
it may be the devil or it may be the lord but you're gonna have to 'serf' somebody
j
Al Franken is the Democratic equivalent of Limbaugh, or a talking head like Madcow, or Doberman. They have their points, and they are very rigid. They are all hateful and don't want you to mess with their reality. Meaner than junkyard dogs.
I would love to stump around the country for the Repos. James Brown did it in his turn, as did Kerouac. I would love that! They are the cat's pyjamas!
Kirby, so you're an Austrian (economics) now? Recall that Hayek learned from von Mises at Chicago. When you finish "Road," then check into what Hayek had to say about central banks. Then read Mises' Human Action. Then devour all the Rothbard you can handle, or just read Tom Woods' -- Meltdown. And, make sure you make regular trips to Lewrockwell.com
I don't fathom, how Limbaugh can claim Hayek as one of his heroes, and not utter an iota about the FED (Federal Reserve System) and "fractional reserve banking" on his show. Limbaugh is either that stupid, or more the sinister.
On Obama. Very simple for me. I cannot respect anyone that has virtually no respect whatsoever for the Constitution of the nation he TOOK AN OATH TO!
To illustrate:
"During the election, then Senator Obama published a statement at his website which said that his birth status was “governed” by the British Nationality Act of 1948. Can you please tell the American people how a natural born citizen of the United States can be governed – at birth – by British law?"
This is so simple dear people. This is not rocket science...
whoa dude
seems like there's feedback screamin in the room
what would hayek surmise regarding
the proliferation of electric guitar mayhem
in a free society
the revolution will not be amplified
j
Where did Hayek say something about central banks? I suppose he was against them.
Thanks for all these ideas. I'm just going one page at a time, now.
I'm reading on, and am now on p. 80. It's not exactly light reading.
I was blown away by this quote on p. 76:
"What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven."
Elsewhere, Hayek simply makes the equation that Socialism is ALWAYS Stalinism, and that it can never be anything else (79).
This is obvious, and yet I thought I was the only one who had ever completely grasped this.
The quote is from Holderlin!
@jh..
"what would hayek surmise regarding
the proliferation of electric guitar mayhem in a free society"
Actually I'm more curious what Bach would think. Possibly how Beethoven reacted in a music store in a mall in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.
I'm working on my very own heavy metal version of Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Eventually, my youtube video will show interspersions between the "Polo Green Pearl Coat" axe (pictured in my profile) and my Yamaha PSR-540, which produces an incredible sample of a cathedral pipe organ, for a valued price keyboard.
I'm not sure what Hayek thinks about Bach or his music, other than the fact that he shares a name with Johann Sebastian's ninth son -- Christoph..
Kirby: Rush Limbaugh gives more to charity (leukemia research) than all other celebrities combined), so, Go, Rush!
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