Quick Roundup 386

Central Planning Snake Oil

Brad Harper emails me regarding the latest anti-capitalist screed that should include Alan Greenspan as co-author, this one posted by Donald Cohen of The Huffington Post. It is a long litany of anti-capitalist cliches that takes advantage of Greenspan's betrayal of principles at every opportunity.

No blow is too low for Cohen. He even implies early on that capitalism is racist, as if all "landmark civil rights legislation" were perfect -- or all capitalists opposed all of it, or doing a better job of protecting the rights of all individuals. Good thing most of us don't deal in stereotypes anymore....

I don't have time to discuss it in much depth this morning, but suffice it to say that I find his droning about "Free Market Fundamentalism" especially ironic, given the context in which we learn of Cohen's own proclivities, which he summarizes for us as follows:

Greenspan's awakening signals a turning point for American capitalism. It's the beginning of the end of the fundamentalist free market epoch, underlined by calls from Democrats and Republicans alike for greater regulation, far more government oversight and even public ownership of private capital. [bold added]

Perhaps Cohen was too busy sopping up -- confiscating? -- the saliva from his keyboard to notice that yesterday, on the same page as his piece, his own site listed the following feature: "Poll: 37% of Americans Unable to Locate America on Map of America". [Note: A couple of commenters help out a busy blogger by informing me that the article is a spoof. Nevertheless, I feel safe holding up the government education monopoly as an example of how things turn out when the government runs them.] Does Cohen think the government can do a better job running everything than it does education, or is a dumbed-down demographic simply his target audience?

And, more to the point, does Cohen never discuss why he favors the government violating individual rights because he is afraid of being known as the traitor to America that he is, or does he think he can get away with it, courtesy of generations of school children mentally crippled by government planning of what should have been their educations?

New Agriculture Site

Monica of Spark a Synapse has started a new web site, FA/RM, advocating a return to freedom specifically in the agricultural sector. In light of the above example of left-wing calls for even more government control of the economy right on the heels of its most recent demonstrated failure, I think her latest post at the blog of her new site is worth a read. It is a fictionalized account of how government might run the automobile industry, but it will sound familiar to anyone who has seen Donald Cohen and his ilk at work over the past century.

I have linked to the blog in the sidebar and the organization on the web link page.

Con Con Update

C. August emails me a link to a blog posting that explores the threat of a Constitutional Convention in more detail than the World Net Daily article I cited Friday. I haven't time to read it in detail this morning, but it looks worthwhile:

Fearing a tyrannical Congress would block the amendatory process, the Framers formulated Article V, wording it so as to fence off the Constitution from hostile or careless hands. They were careful to enumerate Three Forbidden Subjects:

1. Altering the arrangement known as slavery until 1808, a ban that has been lifted both by time and war.
2. Altering the arrangement of equal representation of the states in the Senate.
3. Writing a new constitution.

The last Forbidden Subject is implied, rather than explicit, like the first two. The Framers took great pains to avoid using the term "constitutional convention". Instead, the Founding Document refers to a "Convention for proposing Amendments...as Part of this Constitution". An Article V Convention is strictly limited to proposing amendments to the Constitution of 1787, and it is forbidden to compose a new constitution. No matter what amendments may be proposed, the Constitution must remain intact, else the actions of the Convention become unconstitutional. Unless Article V is amended first to allow it, a Convention for Proposing Amendments can never become a true constitutional convention, i.e. it can never write a new constitution. And neither can Congress. [bold in original]

This is somewhat reassuring, at first blush, anyway.

Mike N and Myrhaf, ...

..., respectively (1) discuss why so many Americans seem to support statist policies, and (2) describe (among other things) how the hard left is still the Angry Left even after the election of The One and single-party government in Congress.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Added note on spoof article.