Pop Quiz
What satirist said: “Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.”?
What British leader observed: “Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.”?
What American inventor said: “Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.”?
What author said” “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”?
What Czech author noted: “Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.”?
Who said: “It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”?
Answers at the end of this post.
The American Federal bureaucracy is comprised, for the most part, of foot soldiers for the kakistocracy. Dealing with a government bureaucrat is akin to the labors of Sisyphus…an inefficacious effort to actually solve a problem. The recent train disaster in East Palestine Ohio is a case study in government jabberwocky. Our poster child for incompetence, Mayor Pete, arrived in East Palestine, wearing his Bob the Builder outfit, and injected a toxic dose of squid ink into the dialogue. In so doing, he managed to blur all reality, make rational thought impossible and avoid discussion of any meaningful attempt to actually understand the problem.
Buttigieg is the QED for the argument that we no longer have a merit based society.
The Golden Age of Free Enterprise
The Left genuinely believes everything should be FREE with the noteworthy exceptions of thinking, speech and enterprise. Between the end of the Civil War and the end of the first decade of the 20th Century we enjoyed free enterprise (the unenlightened erroneously refer to that as capitalism) on steroids.
These are the captains of industry that drove the most productive era of free enterprise in world history:
Andrew Carnegie Steel James Fisk Finance
John Rockefeller Oil Daniel Drew Steamship/railroad
J. P. Morgan Finance Henry Ford Automobiles
Cornelius Vanderbilt Railroads/shipping Andrew Mellon Finance
Jay Gould Railroad E. H. Harriman Railroad
Charles Crocker Railroad George Pullman Railroad
John Jacob Astor Furs and real estate Henry Bessemer Steel
Jay Cooke Railroads Henry Flagler Standard Oil
Leland Stanford Railroads John Warne Gates American Steel and Wire
James Buchanan Duke Tobacco and electric power Russell Sage Railroads
These are the men described by the uninformed, pejoratively, as the Robber Barons. Today they would comprise the Hall of Fame of hetero-patriarchal white supremacists based solely on their physical characteristics. Yet these men of merit and accomplishment were responsible, in large part, for the growth of our nation and the creation of things in our daily lives that we take for granted. Sadly these men and what they accomplished are a complete mystery to anyone who has graduated from a US public school in the last four decades.
The railroads connected our east and west coasts. Samuel Morse invented the telegraph which allowed instant communication across the continent. William Fargo and Henry Wells established ground transportation from the Mississippi to the Pacific. The men who created our steel industry made possible a more permanent infrastructure.
All of these incredible achievements have been lost in the mists of history. What happened?
The Death of Free Enterprise
It began with the administration of Theodore Roosevelt. A very smart man whose intelligence was dwarfed by his ego. He was the product of a Harvard University “education” and truly believed that the United States would be better off if it were governed exclusively by graduates of his alma mater. TR thought that a small cadre of highly intelligent people (in his mind a Harvard degree was all you needed to identify the highly intelligent) should make the decisions for the people described by Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles as follows: ” You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know…morons.” Roosevelt was our first Progressive President. We know that because ran on the Bull Moose Party ticket in 1912. That party was also known as the Progressive Party.
When his successor William Howard Taft proved to be more aligned with traditional American values Roosevelt, in a fit of vainglory, ran as a third party candidate, thereby ensuring the election of Woodrow Wilson a man who, to disastrous effect, combined ego, low intelligence and a thirst for power. So commencing on March 4, 1913 this cadre of “intellectual elitists” began to dismantle our economic miracle and fascism became the order of the day. Progressivism was sold to the masses as the best way to implement governance through the management of the modernization of American society through a program of social reform.
Over time management became micro-management by people who see themselves as that cadre of intellectual elitists, all evidence to the contrary.
The Result
We now have a system that is (mis)managed by people who have accomplished nothing, who have built nothing, who reject all that is good about free enterprise and who see the world as a theoretical exercise. In science you compare theory to reality. To the modern left you reverse that process. Herbert Marcuse was a nihilist who saw nothing positive in the world. He became a societal wrecking ball. A nihilist “rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as knowledge, morality or meaning”. He was the inspiration for Angela Davis, the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground. They all hated the America we all know but had no positive program for the post-revolutionary world they myopically demanded for the future. The World Economic Forum is the red-headed stepchild of Marcuse…a racist and nihilistic organization.
A Modest Proposal
It is time to re-calibrate our government and install civil “servants” who understand the world as it is and not the world as they think it should be. A grasp of reality is essential. Decentralize the bureaucracy and emphasize solution to problems and an end to “paralysis by analysis” which is the most common characteristic of so-called intellectuals.
Elect individuals who understand the concepts of merit and accomplishment, people who will bring a sense of real progress to the government and not “social justice”. Terms limits will help drive this point as complacency inevitably results in protecting the establishment, i.e. the status quo. We need to expose and destroy the so-called deep state which is the entrenched bureaucracy.
Make governance an act of statecraft and not a means of exercising personal power…the thought of AOC being anything more substantive than a mixologist is a flight of fantasy. In the past promotion was earned not bestowed and was based on accomplishment not entitlement.
Next post: How to implement the modest proposal.
Things to ponder:
Imagine the embarrassment Roosevelt would endure if he had lived to see what his Harvard alumni dream has become: One wonders how he would react to a ruling class populated by Adam Schiff-for-brains, Joy Reid, Teddy Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Katie Porter and Antony Blinken…Harvard grads all. Barack Obama is the cherry on top of that Harvard sundae.
Here is an exercise designed to see what Harvard people can actually do: Set aside 5,000 acres of prime real estate in Montana. Make sure is has plenty of clean water, arable land and timber. Leave a box of tools with instructions on how to use hammers and screwdrivers. Fence it off and put 250 Harvard graduates inside. Then return in one year to see what they have created by way of a human habitat.
Pop quiz answers:
What satirist said: “Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.”? PJ O’Rourke
What British leader observed: “Moderation has been called a virtue to limit the ambition of great men, and to console undistinguished people for their want of fortune and their lack of merit.”? Benjamin Disraeli
What American inventor said: “Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.”? Thomas Edison
What Author said: “Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”? Robert Heinlein
What Czech author noted: “Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.”? Franz Kafka
Who said: “It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”? The great Thomas Sowell